Mastering Light: From the Natural to the Artificial

Lanterns, candles, gaslights, electric lights, moonlight, and brilliant sun all attract us with their singular magnetism. Artists throughout the centuries have understood this. They have turned the eyes and attentions of viewers with these devices, and, in effect, have left us with not only arresting works of art but also an aesthetic, social, and technological history of lighting. From the old masters through the early twentieth century, this exhibition explored the engagement of European and American artists with lighting through a selection of paintings, watercolors, drawings, prints, and photographs.

In these works, natural light glazing a room carries particular meaning as do moonlight clothing a narrative scene or lampposts beckoning the night. The exhibition’s galleries were devoted to the natural, nocturnal, and artificial, with works selected from the permanent collection and additional loans. Artists represented included Albrecht Dürer, Rembrandt van Rijn, Francisco de Goya, James Gillray, Anna Atkins, Max Klinger, Edvard Munch, Robert Henri, and Edward Hopper, among numerous others.

The exhibition was sponsored by the Evelyn Metzger Exhibition Fund. There are works that appeared in this exhibition that were loans to the Loeb and therefore do not appear on this website.