Nocturne

Date:: 1955
Medium:: Color woodblock print
Edition:: Self-printed
Source:: Art Institute of Chicago

Typical Price

$500–$4,000. Common prints: $500–$1,500. Key value factors: Uchima's luminous landscape prints appeal to collectors of both Japanese prints and modern American art.

Description

Nocturne (1955) is a color woodblock print that borrows its title from music — specifically the piano nocturnes of Chopin and Field, compositions written "for the night" that combine lyrical melody with introspective mood. The musical nocturne emerged as a Romantic genre in the early nineteenth century, and its application to visual art (most famously by Whistler, who titled his Thames paintings "Nocturnes" in the 1870s) established a cross-medium tradition that Uchima extends into woodblock printing. The print translates the nocturne's essential qualities — sustained tone, gentle modulation, and the intimacy of nighttime solitude — into the visual language of color and carved form.