“Mais comme Elstir, quand la Baie de Balbec, ayant perdu son mystère, était devenue pour moi une partie quelconque, interchangeable avec toute autre, des quantités d’eau salée qu’il y a sur le globe, lui avait tout d’un coup rendu une individualité en me disant que c’était le golfe d’opale de Whistler dans ses harmonies bleu argent, …”
(Le côté de Guermantes, 22)

“But just as Elstir, when the bay of Balbec, losing its mystery, had become for me simply a portion, interchangeable with any other, of the total quantity of salt water distributed over the earth’s surface, had suddenly restored to it a personality of its own by telling me that it was the gulf of opal painted by Whistler in his Harmonies in Blue and Silver,…”
(The Guermantes Way, 27)

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James Abbott McNeill Whistler (American, 1834-1903)
Nocturne in Blue and Silver, c. 1871-1872
Oil on wood panel, 44.5 x 61 cm (17 1/2 x 24 in.)
Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop, 1943.176