Coast Scene, Bathers

A very small panel — about 13 by 22 centimetres — holding a beach, a sea, a sky and roughly a dozen people, each one a single dab of thin paint. Three horizontal bands do all the structural work.

Painted outdoors in 1884–85, which was a deliberate change of method: the Nocturnes of the previous decade were built in the studio from memory. Signed with the butterfly monogram Whistler used instead of his name.