The nocturne is a pictorial genre consisting of the representation of scenes or landscapes set at night. Nocturne painting is a term coined by James Abbott McNeill Whistler to describe a painting style that depicts scenes evocative of the night or subjects as they appear in a veil of light, in twilight, or in the absence of direct light. In a broader usage, the term has come to refer to any painting of a night scene, or night-piece, such as Rembrandt’s The Night Watch.

Nocturne paintings has been given practically in all the periods and styles of art, although its practice had the difficulty of its true representation because of the absence of light, so in many occasions it was necessary to resort to chiaroscuro and the effects luminics from artificial light, while natural light must come from the moon or stars. For artificial light they used to use candles, teas, lamps, lamps, fireworks or similar elements, while in more recent times appear gas or electric lights, neon lights or those produced by car headlights and the like. These light bulbs can be direct or indirect, can appear in the picture or illuminate the scene from outside. As for the color range, it is usually cold. Some artistic styles have especially developed this type of scenes, such as Baroque tenebrism.

Whistler used the term within the title of his works to represent paintings with a “dreamy, pensive mood” by applying a musical name. A nocturnal is according to the eponymous musical form created by Frederic Chopin . He also titled (and retitled) works using other terms associated with music, such as a “symphony”, “harmony”, “study” or “arrangement”, to emphasize the tonal qualities and the composition and to de-emphasize the narrative content. The use of the term “nocturne” can be associated with the Tonalism movement of the American of the late 19th century and early 20th century which is “characterized by soft, diffused light, muted tones and hazy outlined objects, all of which imbue the works with a strong sense of mood.” Along with winter scenes, nocturnes were a common Tonalist theme.Frederic Remington used the term as well for his nocturne scenes of the American Old West.

Some of the most famous nocturnes are: La ronda de noche (1642), by Rembrandt; On May 3 in Madrid (1813-1814), by Francisco de Goya; or Starry Night on the Rhone (1888), by Vincent van Gogh. Some authors have felt a special predilection for this type of work, such as James Abbott McNeill Whistler or Frederic Remington. It was also a resource widely used by American impressionists and realists, such as John Henry Twachtman, Albert Pinkham Ryder, Frank Tenney Johnson and Edward Hopper.

Rembrandt’s nocturnes
In northern Europe, the Dutch Golden Age produced one of the greatest artists of all time. The first artist to paint scenes on a regular basis in the nocturne mode was Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669). Many of his portraits were also painted using a nocturne method. As in The Mill (1645), most of his landscapes were painted to evoke a sense of the nocturne, which could be expressed in either a calm or stormy manner.

Whistler’s Nocturnes
“Nocturne” was a term that was normally applied to certain types of musical compositions before James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834–1903), inspired by the language of music, began using the word within the titles of many of his works, such as Nocturne in Blue and Silver (1871), in the collection of the Tate Gallery, London, United Kingdom.

Frederic Remington’s nocturnes
Frederic Remington (1861-1909) is so identified for his nocturne scenes of the American Old West that they were celebrated in 2003-2004 with an exhibition, Frederic Remington: The Color of Night, co-organized and shown in turn by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., and the Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, Oklahoma. The exhibition also generated a colorful book of the same title and travelled to the Denver Art Museum in Denver, Colorado. Remington painted many of his nocturnes in the last years of his life, when he was transitioning from a career as an illustrator to that of a fine artist and had chosen Impressionism as the style in which he worked at the time. One example of his work is The Stampede (also known as The Stampede by Lightning, 1908).

This pictorial treatment of the night which becomes a subject of painting for herself from the fifteenth century is particularly popular in American painting at the turn of the twentieth century.