Nocturne 1951

Victoria Hutson Huntley made this lithograph called ‘Nocturne,’ at some point in her career, using stone and grease. Look at how she captures the soft light of dusk, or maybe it's dawn, through these tiny, deliberate marks. It’s like she's feeling her way through the dark, letting the image emerge slowly, like a memory. The texture in this piece is so rich. There’s this constant play between light and shadow, like the world is breathing. See how she renders the reeds and the water? You can almost feel the dampness, the weight of the air. The birds are like punctuation marks scattered across the page, each one perfectly placed to create a sense of movement and life. Check out the bird in the center, its wings spread wide as it takes flight. It’s as if she’s trying to capture a moment that's both fleeting and eternal. It reminds me of Whistler’s moody, atmospheric prints, or maybe even some of those early Impressionist landscapes. It’s about capturing a feeling, a mood, more than a literal representation of a scene.