Nocturne: Blue and Gold — Southampton Water

An inlet off the English Channel, dissolved by the approaching night. Large ships are reduced to grey shapes with no detail, the water is a flat band, and the only bright points are a few reflected lights and a broken disc of moon.

Whistler named these paintings Nocturnes to make the point that they were arrangements of tone rather than pictures of places, in the same way a piece of music is not about anything. Painted in 1872, at the height of that argument.