Moonlit Seascape 1909

Emil Carlsen, sometime between the late 19th and early 20th century, made this painting called Moonlit Seascape. Look at the surface, how it almost dissolves into soft focus. Carlsen is really working that line between representation and abstraction. It's so atmospheric, like he's painting the feeling of the sea, more than the sea itself. The way the paint is applied is so delicate, thin washes, built up layer upon layer. You can see how he’s scrubbed the paint into the canvas, creating this almost hazy effect. Check out the highlight of the moon reflecting on the water and you can almost see the brushstrokes dancing. There’s a subtlety to his work, like Whistler, that’s so satisfying. Carlsen, like many artists, was in conversation with the painting of his time. He looked back to the tonalist tradition and brought that into his own contemporary painting, and reminds us that art is never created in a vacuum.