Night in paintings (Western art)
They are sometimes called nocturnes,[3] or night-pieces, such as Rembrandt's The Night Watch, or the German Romantic Caspar David Friedrich's Two Men Contemplating the Moon of 1819.
In America, James Abbott McNeill Whistler titled works as nocturnes to identify those paintings with a "dreamy, pensive mood" by applying the musical term,[4] and likewise also titled (and retitled) works using other music expressions, such as a "symphony", "harmony", "study" or "arrangement", to emphasize the tonal qualities and the composition and to de-emphasize the narrative content.
Eighteenth-century Rococo painters Antoine Watteau, François Boucher, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, and others used the night-time theme to illustrate scenes of the imagination, often with dramatic literary connotations, including scenes of secret liaisons and romantic relationships reminiscent of the popular 1782 book Les Liaisons dangereuses by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos.
A mystical, religious, and sublime reverence for nature is seen in Caspar David Friedrich, Thomas Cole, Frederick Church, Albert Bierstadt, Albert Pinkham Ryder and others, while the powerful and dramatic romanticism of Francisco Goya, Théodore Géricault, and Eugène Delacroix served as visual reportage of current events, and in the case of Géricault revealed a scandal.
Gustave Courbet, who with Honoré Daumier, Jules Breton, Jean-François Millet, and others created the Realist school, portrayed ordinary people hard at work, traveling, or engrossed in their everyday lives, at night and during the day.
The Impressionists and Post-Impressionists of the late 19th century used the night-time theme to express a multitude of emotional and aesthetic insights seen most dramatically in the paintings of Edgar Degas, Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh and others.
[11]: 91 Against the night sky the brilliance of the angel's bright glow, likely intended as "verification of the presence of God and as a metaphor for spiritual enlightenment", appears to startle the shepherd.
[17] The passage of time, from dawn to evening, is illustrated in the three paintings with the initial use of pale, pastel shades and increasingly darker tones as the battle progresses.
Although the shepherds' fire on the hill behind and the angel outside the window create a light source, it's dim in comparison to that provided by the infant child.
[20]: 232 [21] London's National Gallery describes Geertgen's work as: "one of the most engaging and convincing early treatments of the Nativity as a night scene.
[12]: 56 Albrecht Altdorfer (c. 1480 – 12 February 1538) was a German painter, engraver and architect of the Renaissance of the so-called Danube School setting biblical and historical subjects against landscape backgrounds of expressive colours.
[24] Baroque paintings featured "exaggerated lighting, intense emotions, release from restraint, and even a kind of artistic sensationalism".
[14]: 299 [27] Georges de La Tour was a French Baroque painter who painted mostly religious chiaroscuro scenes lit by candlelight, which were more developed than his artistic predecessors, yet lacked dramatic effects of Caravaggio.
He created some of the most arresting works in this genre, portraying a wide range of scenes by candlelight from card games to New Testament narratives.
His The Port of Rochefort (1763, Musée national de la Marine) is particularly notable; in the piece Vernet is able to achieve, according to art historian Michael Levey, one of his most 'crystalline and atmospherically sensitive skies'.
[33] Joseph Wright of Derby (3 September 1734 – 29 August 1797) was an English landscape and portrait painter who is notable for his use of Chiaroscuro effect, which emphasises the contrast of light and dark, and for his paintings of candle-lit subjects.
"[38]: 99 On Hampstead Hill is considered one of Grimshaw's finest works, exemplifying his skill with a variety of light sources, in capturing the mood of the passing of twilight into night.
"[40]: 112 Unlike Whistler's Impressionistic night scenes Grimshaw worked in a realistic vein: "sharply focused, almost photographic," his pictures innovated in applying the tradition of rural moonlight images to the Victorian city, recording "the rain and mist, the puddles and smoky fog of late Victorian industrial England with great poetry.
Van Schendel specialised in nocturnal Dutch market scenes, exploring the effects the soft light had upon his subjects, as a result he was named Monsieur Chandelle by the French.
Remington painted many of his nocturnes in the last years of his life, when he was transitioning from a career as an illustrator to that of a fine artist and had chosen Impressionism as the style in which he worked at the time.
[58]: 65 For much of its existence, the painting was coated with a dark varnish which gave the incorrect impression that it depicted a night scene, leading to the name by which it is now commonly known.
It is set in the early hours of the morning following the uprising[59]: 363 and centers on two masses of men: one a rigidly poised firing squad, the other a disorganized group of captives held at gun point.
Executioners and victims face each other abruptly across a narrow space; according to Kenneth Clark, "by a stroke of genius [Goya] has contrasted the fierce repetition of the soldiers' attitudes and the steely line of their rifles, with the crumbling irregularity of their target.
[62]: 297 The central figure is the brilliantly lit man kneeling amid the bloodied corpses of those already executed, his arms flung wide in either appeal or defiance.
[60]: 116 The painting is structurally and thematically tied to traditions of martyrdom in Christian art, as exemplified in the dramatic use of chiaroscuro, and the appeal to life juxtaposed with the inevitability of imminent execution.
Works that depicted violence, such as those by Jusepe de Ribera, feature an artful technique and harmonious composition which anticipate the "crown of martyrdom" for the victim.
Rather, it affords light only so that the firing squad may complete its grim work, and provides a stark illumination so that the viewer may bear witness to wanton violence.
[63]: 225 Although Van Gogh was not very happy with the painting,[64] art historian Joachim Pissarro cites The Starry Night as an exemplar of the artist's fascination with the nocturnal.
As well, interior light comes from more than a single lightbulb, with the result that multiple shadows are cast, and some spots are brighter than others as a consequence of being lit from more than one angle.
