Although immediately recognized as extraordinary works, Remington's late nocturnes have never before been the subject of an exhibition. The paintings are also elegiac, for they reflect Remington's lament that the West he had known as a young man had, by the turn of the century, largely disappeared. These complex paintings testify to the artist's interest in modern technological innovations, including flash photography and the advent of electricity, which was rapidly transforming the character of night. Surprisingly, Remington's nocturnes are filled with color and light-moonlight, firelight, and candlelight.

Before his premature death in 1909 at age forty-eight, Remington completed more than seventy paintings in which he explored the technical and aesthetic difficulties of painting darkness. About 1900 he began a series of paintings that took as their subject the color of night. As he matured, however, Remington turned his attention away from illustration, concentrating instead on painting and sculpture. Initially, his western images appeared as illustrations in popular journals. Frederic Remington (1861–1909) has long been celebrated as one of the most gifted interpreters of the American West.

Images of the old west