turn off the lights

A gallery owner once said to me that so many paintings are hard to light because the painter works under too much artificial light.That lack of inner light makes them hard to be in a collector's home without special lighting.
Think about it. When we use more light "to see" (we can all be guilty) then the colors need all that light to "be seen." I am fortunate to work in north, natural light...but there are times when it is dark or rainy that I turn on my lights and know what he means. Therefore, when a painting is coming to completion I always finish it in dimmer light.
This is one that celebrates the wonderful color - gray.

P.S. Yesterday I was at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and was delighted by a Civil War exhibit. All previous unseen Sanford Gifford, Frederic Church, Eastman
Johnson and Winslow Homer. These paintings normally reside in either private collections or museums I have not visited (ie the Military Museum)  Here is a link to the exhibit.

Eastman Johnson