Moonlight, Wolf

Moonlight, Wolf at the Addison Gallery of American Art in Andover belongs to the series of nocturnal Western landscapes Remington produced in his final decade, when he became increasingly interested in painting darkness, moonlight, and the almost abstract quality of landscape at night. The wolf as a subject under moonlight combined his Western naturalism with the atmospheric possibilities of nocturnal painting, placing animal and landscape within a night world of reduced colour and suggestive shadow. The Addison Gallery, associated with Phillips Academy, holds one of the most significant collections of American art in the country.

Nocturnal painting required Remington to abandon the warm, high-contrast colour he used in his daytime subjects and work in the cool, limited palette of moonlit nights. He renders the wolf as a dark form against a slightly lighter snow or ground surface, using faint moonlight to define edges without eliminating the darkness.