Exhibition : Nocturnes

A nocturne is a work of art dealing with evening or night. The term, associated with the music of Frederic Chopin, was adopted by the American expatriate artist, James McNeill Whistler, as a title for some of his crepuscular paintings inspired by the evening light in London that sought tonal harmonies similar to those in music.

In the last years of the 19th century, the vogue for nocturne paintings grew among young American artists influenced by Whistler and the French Barbizon School tonalists. These artists used moody nocturnal paintings to represent spiritual transcendence, a departure from the naturalism of the Hudson River School painters who relied on sharp details and recognizable locations. Looking back nostalgically to colonial times, before the advent of electricity, early 20th century nocturne painters portrayed a world illuminated by firelight, candlelight, or the full moon.

In 1899 in New York, California artist Charles Rollo Peters (1862-1928) exhibited a series of sixteen moonlit views of California missions. His nocturnal paintings had an enormous impact on East Coast painters such as Frederic Remington, best known for his images of the American West, and young emerging talent such as DeWitt Parshall (1864-1956) who would ultimately reside in Santa Barbara. Peters’ nocturne, The Santa Ynez Mission by Moonlight (c. 1915) will be included in the exhibition at the Wildling, along with nocturnes by Dewitt Parshall, Colin Campbell Cooper, Lockwood de Forest, and Matthew Rackham Barnes, and by contemporary painters, Thomas Van Stein and Marcia Burtt.

Date : September 21, 2008 - January 4, 2009 .
Time : Wednesday - Sunday at 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.