Nocturnes

When Whistler titled his shadowy river views Nocturnes he borrowed the word from music — from Chopin — to insist that a painting could be a mood before it was a scene. The nocturne is the picture in which night stops being a backdrop and becomes the subject itself. Look at how little is described: a few lamps smeared along a wharf, a tonal wash of blue-grey, a horizon you have to take on faith. The discipline is one of restraint. A daylight painter has every colour available; the painter of night works inside a near-monochrome and must make a handful of values carry the whole feeling. Whistler is the obvious master, but the lineage runs back through Aert van der Neer's moonlit Dutch canals and forward into Tonalism. The thing to watch for is the single point of artificial light — a window, a flame, a reflection — around which the painter organises the dark. It is the eye's only foothold, and the picture's quiet drama.

Curatorial note by Alexander Knigge, Editor, Artifact World Gallery