“Road Into the Valley, Moonrise,” Eduard Steichen, 1906. Another love of mine seldom attempted by most painters… a “nocturne,” a painting of a nighttime scene, preferably absent artificial light. (Nocturne is also a musical term.) If you can, view the image using a dark theme in your browser. Lots of white on your screen will make it difficult to perceive the subtle shadow details in the painting. Our eyes are drawn right to the bright moon emerging from behind the trees, spraying light into the sky, which then softly rains on the foreground… to the fence, to the dirt path leading the eyes back around a corner to the trees again, and the moon. The journey continues. The dim, reflected light of the sun off the moon drains the hues and melds the values we would see in daylight. The Moody Blues put it poetically in “Late Lament”…
Cold-hearted orb that rules the night,
Removes the colors from our sight,
Red is gray and yellow white,
But we decide which is right,
And which is an illusion