Nocturne: Palaces

James McNeill Whistler

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Nocturne: Palaces is one of the most evocative of Whistler’s Venetian etchings. A gas lantern casts rays of light into the gathering darkness and acts as a focal point for a meeting of palace walls, canals, and a footbridge veiled by atmospheric haze. The delicate streaking of the ink in the upper and lower portions of the sheet creates effects similar to monotype achieved through careful wiping. Whistler trimmed the print to the plate line, leaving a small tab where he inscribed his butterfly signature, establishing the idea of a limited edition. He printed this work three years after returning to London from Venice, for an 1883 exhibition at the Fine Art Society. In 1886, it was published by Dowdeswell and Thibaudeau in Twenty-Six Etchings (the "Second Venice Set").

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art