American Art and Pennsylvania Impressionists

Although he started his career as a stained glass artist in Pittsburgh, George Sotter is best known for his poetic winter nocturne scenes, in which he featured quaint hamlets or solitary houses blanketed in the snow, nearby a river or a forest, and bathed in a soothing moonlight, as depicted here. 

Acquired directly from the artist, A Light in the Window is a quintessential canvas depicting a solitary stone barn in a winter field at night. Rendered in a particularly large format, the painting shows a small light twinkling through the window–the only sign of a human presence in this otherwise quiet décor, which adds a sense of narrative and mystery to the scene. Executed at the peak of Sotter's painting career, likely from nature, the present work is set near the artist's own home and studio in Holicong, Pennsylvania, amidst the "tranquil tenor, beautiful stone houses and rolling hills of Bucks County" to which Sotter was first introduced in 1902 by fellow Pennsylvania Impressionist, Edward Redfield, who took the artist under his wing and invited him to become his student at his home in Centre Bridge. 

With its thick impasto, quick impressionistic touch and impactful composition, A Light in the Window reveals the great influence of Redfield on Sotter's work. The viewer is invited to enter the picture plane through the projected oblique shadows at left, and through the rolling terrain which leads to the barn. Captured in a restricted palette of blues, purples and grays, the picture offers a vision of stillness which goes beyond the mere recording of a tranquil country night, as it distills a sense of nostalgia, and even mysticism, that speaks to the artist's inner personality. 

Few American artists painted night subjects as regularly as Sotter, who is said to have produced hundreds of works of that type. Contrary to James Abbott McNeill Whistler's nocturnes which were voluntarily loose and obscure abstract landscapes difficult to decipher, Sotter's moonlight paintings aimed at a certain clarity and showed a sense of detail, as if the viewer could see in plain sight. Such works generated incredible interest among the artist's collectors and critics, who cherished them for their romantic touch and deeper significance.