Nocturne in Black and Gold – The Falling Rocket

Nocturne in Black and Gold – The Falling Rocket is a painting of c. 1875 by James Abbott McNeill Whistler that exemplified the Art for art's sake movement – a concept formulated by Pierre Jules Théophile Gautier and Charles Baudelaire. This painting was first shown at the Grosvenor Gallery in London in 1877 and is one of two works (the other being Nocturne in Black and Gold – The Firewheel) inspired by the Cremorne Gardens, a celebrated pleasure resort in London. One of his many works from his series of Nocturnes, it is the last of the London Nocturnes and is now widely acknowledged to be the high point of Whistler's middle period. Whistler's depiction of the industrial city park in The Falling Rocket includes a fireworks display in the foggy night sky. Nocturne in Black and Gold – The Falling Rocket is most famously known as the inception of the lawsuit between Whistler and the art critic John Ruskin.

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nocturne in Black and Gold – The Falling Rocket
• Page 44 - Houston, K., 2013, An Introduction to Art Criticism: Histories, Strategies, Voices: Pearson, 343p.