This beautiful book is a true treasure. It would be lovely to give this to someone as a gift. Simply beautiful!

Have you even seen artwork depicting night time scenes? This book takes a closer look at these works of art, as well as the artist. There is a lot of history involved in Nocturnal art work, that I never knew existed. There are tons of photos of the artwork as well and believe it or not a lot of them are actually beautiful. I have to admit I did skim over some of the history part as I am not an art critique it was a bit above. But the descriptions of the artwork themselves were fascinating.

I received this book from the Author or Publisher via Netgalley.com and chose to leave this review.

This is an interesting looking at the portrayal of Night in American Art and the broader social issues. I enjoyed reading the book but I did find it slow going. I read an ecopy of the book and some of the illustrations did not show up well. This book should be read slowly and in a hard copy format. Anyone with an interest in American art and American history at the turn of the century will enjoy this book.

This is not an easy book to read as it offers many quite complex ideas and theories about why American image makers around the turn of the century became so preoccupied with depicting the night. Under the general headings of obscurity, racism and cosmopolitanism, the author explores artists’ responses to the political, cultural and socioeconomic changes of the time and especially to technological and scientific innovations, such as electricity. No longer was night simply dark, but it could be illuminated in various ways and it’s the author’s thesis that this led to an increased preoccupation with portraying it. The rise of the nocturne as a genre is perhaps best exemplified by Whistler but many others were interested too, from Winslow Homer to Frederic Remington, plus makers of images in photography, comics, advertisements and newspapers. This is much more than a simple art book, as there are many ideas to absorb, and I’m not sure I always fully absorbed them. A second reading may be in order. However simply as an art book, it is beautifully illustrated and on that level alone it is extremely enjoyable and entertaining. A book to delight any art lover.

Electrifying

This is a challenging but rewarding book. When I first took it up it felt like an odd choice - while I was drawn to the idea of the nocturnal it seemed that this book would address no more than an odd little niche in the vast world of art. So wrong, (or at least so shortsighted), but so happily corrected.

We start with Whistler, who came along after the vast and majestic western landscapes of the 1830's, and who embraced the nocturne as a form of pure painting unrelated to any representation of the "real" world. From these "tonal" paintings and nightscapes, which might be said to mark the beginning of interest in the nocturnal, the narrative moves on to later paintings, photographs, prints, and even advertising and popular media. What is the appeal of night imagery, and how does it connect with everything from the spread of electric lighting to growing social anxiety?

We tend to take nighttime for granted or to ignore it, but for most of history, including American history, night was a palpable force in the routines of life. As daily life changed, as electricity changed the way we lived in and looked at the world, and as modernity transformed the landscapes so beloved by Hudson School painters, the nocturne was a reaction, a veil, a melancholy reminder of a simpler past, and an ambiguous and ambivalent commentary on the unknown future. You can get a little too cute with all of this; by equating nocturnes with "darkness", which can be a metaphor for anything you want, you can pretty much make any arguments and draw any conclusions you care to. I finally concluded that, in addition to the art history,the fact that this book gets you thinking along such lines, and offers you plenty of material to work with and think about, may be its best feature.

This all sounds like it could be tedious or too polemical to be entertaining, and sometimes it is, but Valance is generally a knowledgeable, amiable and persuasive guide. Over 150 well chosen and faithfully reproduced drawings and prints illustrate Valance's points. While some connections and themes are fanciful, labored, and unconvincing, (nocturnes being a statement of "social whiteness" because race relations are a matter of light and dark, for example, and all nocturnes are implicitly racial metaphors), the larger discussion of nocturnes is generally thought provoking and skillfully laid before the reader. Insights regarding the switch over time from rural nightscapes to urban nightscapes are especially noteworthy. That said, this book leans more to the academic/scholarly side than to the popular side, which means that there is some heavy footnoting, some insider score settling, occasional esoteric jargon, and other scholarly trappings. Thankfully, that never gets in the way of the larger story and did not prove to be an obstacle to at least this non-academic reader.

My bottom line - simply as an interesting art history book this works well. The artworks are well described, well placed, and well linked by the narrative. I finished with a better informed and deeper appreciation of night scenes, moonlit landscapes, nocturnes, and the like. As a social history, the author draws numerous apt and insightful connections between the art and its larger social context that prompt and reward further thought. I don't see how you can ask for much more than that, and I ended up happy with this choice.

(Please note that I received a free advance will-self-destruct-in-x-days Adobe Digital copy of this book without a review requirement, or any influence regarding review content should I choose to post a review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.)

Nocturne
Helene Valance
The history was very interesting and I quite enjoyed it. The author captured all of it beautifully. This not my usual kind of book so it was nice to read something different. The paintings were amazing and I liked the description of the pieces and their artists.

A beautifully delicate and intricate photography collection that didn't seem to capture my attention.

As a long-time fan of the arts, the synopsis of NOCTURNE interested me enough to want to view the book. I am also nocturnal, with a love for the night, so these images really intrigued me, especially as the author puts them into the context of the social, political, and technological changes occurring at the time.

As others have mentioned, there was an issue with the pictures at times. Some were too dark to be able to make out the detail, some were too small in scale, and others needed to be higher quality. This made it difficult to see what they were attempting to portray.

This is a thorough and in-depth analysis that fascinated me. I would recommend to art lovers such as myself.

I would like to thank Hélène Valance, Yale University Press, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This was written for any art lover-or simply someone who is curious to know a little bit more about art, the process that goes behind each piece and the meaning of why it was created. In-depth, and fascinating.

The only problem I had was that some of the photos throughout were a little too dark and small to grasp and capture what each piece was trying to convey.

Would recommend.

I would like to thank Hélène Valance, Jane Marie Todd, and Yale University Press for the opportunity to read and review this book for an honest opinion.