A certain harmony of colour

IN 1878, an extraordinary trial took place at the Old Bailey—one concerned not with crime, but with the very nature of art itself. The eminent critic John Ruskin had published an open letter the previous year in which he accused James McNeill Whistler of ‘Cockney impudence’ for having the temerity to ask 200 guineas for ‘flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face’. The canvas on which the pot of paint had allegedly been flung was Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket, which had gone on display at the newly opened Grosvenor Gallery in London. Whistler sued Ruskin for libel and won, although the award of one farthing damages did little to stave off his bankruptcy.

Whistler declared that