Moonlight

Ralph Albert Blakelock (1847-1919) was an American painter known for his moonlit landscapes that combine Romantic atmosphere with a heavily impastoed surface in the manner that distinguishes his best work from the more conventional landscapes of his contemporaries. Moonlight from 1886-95 depicts a moonlit landscape in the heavily impastoed, atmospheric manner that distinguishes Blakelock's best work. The 1886-95 date places this in Blakelock's most productive period, when he was producing the moonlit landscapes that are his most accomplished works, and the moonlight subject allowed him to exercise his talent for the atmospheric effects and impasto technique that make his paintings among the most distinctive in American art.

Moonlight is important in the history of American painting because it demonstrates the heavily impastoed, atmospheric manner that makes Blakelock's paintings among the most distinctive in American art. Blakelock's moonlit landscapes combine Romantic atmosphere with a heavily impastoed surface that creates a type of American landscape painting that is simultaneously atmospheric and tactile—a combination that anticipates the expressionist landscape painting of the 20th century.

Moonlight is Blakelock's impastoed Romantic landscape: a moonlit scene rendered with the heavily impastoed surface and atmospheric effect that make his paintings among the most distinctive in American art. The 1886-95 painting combines Romantic atmosphere with tactile impasto in a manner that anticipates 20th-century expressionist landscape.