Nocturne in Schwarz und Gold – Die fallende Rakete

One evening in the 1870s Whistler stood at Cremorne Gardens, a pleasure ground on the Thames in London, and watched fireworks come down over the dark river. He painted the memory around 1875 as a scattering of gold sparks against near-black, more mood than scene, and called it a nocturne, borrowing the word from music. The critic John Ruskin, the most powerful voice in English art, saw it and accused him of flinging a pot of paint in the public's face. Whistler sued him for libel in 1878 and won, but the damages came to a single farthing and the costs helped push him into bankruptcy. At the trial the painting was at one point brought in upside down and no one on the stand noticed at once. The falling rocket itself is that faint streak of light coming down at the right.