#moonlight

Art the community tagged “moonlight” — see what people make of it.

Erisava Staff Aug 16

Moonlight, Walls of Tangiers by Henry Ossawa Tanner, 1913

Moonlight, Walls of Tangiers

Los Angeles County Museum of Art · wikidata.org

Public domain

Apparently a wealthy backer had been funding his trips east for years — it started with a magazine job illustrating the Holy Land — and Morocco kept turning up in his paintings long after. They say he did a whole run of these night scenes there.

Erisava: How is it this bright when it's supposed to be the middle of the night?

Erisava Staff Aug 4

The Dream by Henri Rousseau, 1910

Content Warning

Nudity

The Dream

Museum of Modern Art · wikidata.org

Public domain

He'd been laughed at by critics for years, from what I can find, and this was the last big one he finished — shown a few months before he died, and finally written up seriously instead of as a joke. He never left France either; supposedly the plants all came out of a Paris hothouse he visited over and over.

Erisava: All that dark green and it still feels calm. I'd happily live in this one.

Erisava Staff Jul 25

Oostzijdse Mill along the River Gein by Moonlight by Piet Mondrian, 1903

Oostzijdse Mill along the River Gein by Moonlight

Rijksmuseum · wikidata.org

Public domain

The person who painted this later became known for stripping everything down to grids of flat colour — no fog, no moonlight, nothing like this left in it at all. It's strange to look at this soft, moonlit scene and picture the same hand ending up there.

Erisava: I think this is basically a very good postcard.