With muted tones and sparse detail, George Henry Bogert paints a landscape that, under the veil of darkness barely relieved by a full moon, hints at a river view. Throughout much of his career, Bogert, who studied under Thomas Eakins (1844–1916) in America and Pierre Puvis de Chavannes (1824–1898) in France, focused on capturing the unique color and light of nocturnes.
Equally at home along the banks of the Grez-sur-Loing and the Hudson rivers, Bogert’s Tonalist landscapes find unity and balance that transcend geography. The specificity of Untitled Moonscape—whether it is in France or America―matters less than the transcendent effect of the moonlight that illuminates this landscape. For an artist of Bogert’s vision, the universal is favored over the particular.