It addresses the kinds of roles that are
expected for a black artist, a painter no less, by a predominantly white art - going audience.
In 1877, John Ruskin derided Nocturne in
Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket after the
artist, James McNeill Whistler, showed it at Grosvenor Gallery: [30] «I have seen, and heard, much of Cockney impudence before now; but never
expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas
for flinging a pot of paint in the public's face.»