All Whistler wanted was to paint some fireworks, but what he got instead was a lawsuit and a filing for bankruptcy.

The Falling Rocket is one of Whistler’s six Nocturne paintings that showcase London’s Cremorne Gardens, which was the place to be for Victorian-era Londoners. Every night, people of all social classes could stroll the gardens enjoying live music, jugglers, bowling alleys, restaurants, taverns, and nightly fireworks shows. Two of the Nocturnes showcase the climax of the fireworks shows; the companion piece to The Falling Rocket is called The Fire Wheel, which sounds like a sick fireworks finale, and is at the Tate Britain. 

Captivated, Whistler decided he must record them in paint. Unlike the Impressionists though, Whistler did not paint the scenes as he experienced them. Instead, he captured images in his mind and painted them in the studio. He thinned his oil pants to an almost colorless state to create the hazy, billowing smoke and deep darkness that envelop these works.

However, Whistler’s style and technique didn’t cut it for John Ruskin, an art critic who took a decidedly hateful stance against The Falling Rocket when he first saw it at London’s Grosvenor Gallery in 1877. The gallery championed art of the Aesthetic Movement, frequently showing artists like Whistler and Edward Burne-Jones. The Grosvenor became the hip and happening alternative to the strict measures of the Royal Academy, where artists could present their uniquely modern artworks. This was precisely what Ruskin hated and believed was ruining art itself. Instead, Ruskin believed that great art had social and moral messages, and he supported artists like Joseph Mallord William Turner and the Pre-Raphaelites.

Whistler’s technique in particular offended the critic’s sensibilities. Ruskin wrote a scathing review of the work, claiming that Whistler merely flung paint at a canvas and, in doing so, right in the public’s face. Whistler then sued Ruskin for libel, and the two faced each other in a highly-anticipated legal battle. The lawsuit essentially began the most essential question surrounding modern art: what is art’s purpose? Whistler helped to define the role of the modern artist, whose duty is to interpret what they see and feel and express that into their artworks.

Whistler ultimately won the suit, defending art’s right to be whatever it wanted. Ruskin, on the other hand, kept stewing in his hatred. He hated the industrialization of London and the debased society that capitalism was supporting, so it makes sense that he also disliked the notion of art for art’s sake, as well as the capitalism-fueled pleasures that took place at the Cremorne Gardens. It turns out that London society probably wasn’t ready for this free-spirited pleasure yet either. By the 1870s, the stiff and sensible upper class began to complain about the drunk and disorderly behavior that ruled the Gardens at night, and the Gardens closed in 1877. Today, you can visit still visit the park, but it’s a fraction of its original size and has way fewer prostitutes than it did in the nineteenth century. Bummer.