diff --git a/doc/source/whatsnew/v0.15.2.txt b/doc/source/whatsnew/v0.15.2.txt
index fe1454d4d2582..da5aad42b51e4 100644
--- a/doc/source/whatsnew/v0.15.2.txt
+++ b/doc/source/whatsnew/v0.15.2.txt
@@ -63,3 +63,4 @@ Bug Fixes
 - Bug in slicing a multi-index with an empty list and at least one boolean indexer (:issue:`8781`)
 - ``io.data.Options`` now raises ``RemoteDataError`` when no expiry dates are available from Yahoo (:issue:`8761`).
 - ``Timedelta`` kwargs may now be numpy ints and floats (:issue:`8757`).
+- Skip testing of histogram plots for matplotlib <= 1.2 (:issue:`8648`).
diff --git a/pandas/tests/test_graphics.py b/pandas/tests/test_graphics.py
index a5d203d688b16..7469abdbd6658 100644
--- a/pandas/tests/test_graphics.py
+++ b/pandas/tests/test_graphics.py
@@ -2041,6 +2041,9 @@ def test_kde_missing_vals(self):
 
     @slow
     def test_hist_df(self):
+        if self.mpl_le_1_2_1:
+            raise nose.SkipTest("not supported in matplotlib <= 1.2.x")
+
         df = DataFrame(randn(100, 4))
         series = df[0]