The Color of the Moon: Lunar Painting in American Art

The moon—its face, color, and enduring myth—threads through the tapestry of American landscape painting, holding timeless allure for artists everywhere. The Hudson River Museum presents a stunning exhibition devoted to the allure of the moon for American painters, whose art has reflected the eternal fascination with our closest celestial body. It is the first major museum examination of the moon as it relates to the story of the American nocturne, as it developed from the early 1820s through the late 1960s.

The exhibition features more than 50 works of art, highlighting key painters who depicted the moon, from the early 19th-century masterpieces of Thomas Cole, the father of the Hudson River School, who embraced a kind of longing Romanticism that the astronomical body symbolized, to late works by famed illustrator Norman Rockwell, represented by his depictions of a long-held romantic yearning finally fulfilled–America’s triumphant lunar landing in 1969. All of the works in the exhibition underscore how the Romantic idea of the moon held an inexorable pull for artists and was central to its depiction of landscape.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website