Description
This painting depicts Abbeville, a city in northern France famous for its canals and architecture. It lies near the seaport of Boulogne-sur-Mer, Cazin's hometown and where he spent the last decades of his life painting the countryside, beaches, and nearby towns. Cazin specialized in landscapes, often influenced by his knowledge of English and Dutch painters. The title, Midnight, and the image itself suggest silence and stillness—Cazin's hallmarks—but only rarely did he attain this almost surrealistic atmosphere. Cazin was educated in Paris at the famous Ecole Gratuite de Dessins (Free School of Drawing), an innovative and unorthodox institution teaching drawing from memory. He studied there with fellow artists Henri Fantin-Latour (1836–1904), Auguste Rodin (1840–1917), and Alphonse Legros (1837–1911). They all shared an interest in Symbolism—the movement that sees symbols in reality and perceives reality through symbols.
Provenance
Shipped with two other works by Cazin from Knoedler Paris to the branch in New York, 16 May 1891 (stock number 6834), as "Night with Stars."; Sold 12 November 1891 to R. K. McNeely, Philadelphia, as "Night," (Cazin's Studio). (Sales book no. 6, p. 314).; Charles T. Yerkes, Philadelphia and Chicago, by 1893.; New York sale, Estate of Mary Adelaide Yerkes, American Art Association, 19-20 February 1912 (lot 142, repr.), as "Moonlight at Midnight."; Edward S. Harkness, Cleveland, OH.; Donated to the Cleveland Museum of Art in 1923.
Accession Number
1923.602
Medium
oil on fabric
Dimensions
Framed: 113 x 112.4 x 11.4 cm (44 1/2 x 44 1/4 x 4 1/2 in.); Unframed: 88 x 89 cm (34 5/8 x 35 1/16 in.)
Classification
Painting
Credit Line
The Charles W. Harkness Gift
Tags
Painting Impressionist & Modern (1851–1900) Oil Painting French
Background & Context
Background Story
Night landscape was one of Cazin's most distinctive subjects, and Midnight is among his most ambitious nocturnes. The painting depicts the landscape in darkness, illuminated only by moonlight or the residual glow of the sky. Nocturnal painting was a tradition that stretched from Rembrandt through the 18th-century candle-lit scenes of Wright of Derby to the moonlight landscapes of the Barbizon painters. Cazin's contribution to this tradition is his consistent tonal approach: the night is not black but blue-silver, and the landscape features are not invisible but suggested by subtle modulations of tone.
Cultural Impact
Cazin's nocturnes anticipate Whistler's moonlight paintings of the 1870s and 1880s, but where Whistler approached night as an aesthetic problem (how much can you subtract and still have a picture?), Cazin approached it as an observational challenge (how much can you see and still be in the dark?). The result is a body of night paintings that are simultaneously atmospheric and specific — real places at real hours, not abstract mood pieces.
Why It Matters
Midnight is Cazin's answer to the question of what a naturalist landscape looks like when the sun goes down. The answer is: not black, not empty, but richly informed by the same careful observation that animates his daylight scenes.
