As soon as the evenings grow dark, many of us start lighting candles. It's almost instinctive. A single flame changes a room: the walls soften, faces glow, voices drop.
Painters understood that pull long before us. For centuries, some of them made candlelight and firelight the true subject of their work.
Painters of the night
- Georges de La Tour (1593–1652). The great French master of candlelight. In works like The Magdalen with the Night Light (Louvre) or The Newborn Child (Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rennes), a single flame lights a face or a hand, and everything else falls into darkness. - Gerrit van Honthorst (1592–1656). A Dutch painter who worked in Rome and became so famous for his night scenes that Italians nicknamed him Gherardo delle Notti, Gerard of the Nights. - Godfried Schalcken (1643–1706). Another Dutch painter, known for small, intimate candlelit scenes: a girl holding a candle, a face glowing in the dark. - Joseph Wright of Derby (1734–1797). In An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump (1768, National Gallery, London), a family gathers around a scientific experiment, lit by one candle. Each face shows a different emotion: curiosity, fear, sorrow, wonder.
Why candlelight moves us
Before electricity, every evening was lit by flames. Light was precious, small and warm. It drew people together into one circle, because the rest of the room was dark. Perhaps that's why candlelight still feels intimate: it shrinks the world to what matters, the people and the things close to us.
There's also the quality of the light itself. A flame is warm in color, soft at the edges and never perfectly still. It gives the eyes something gentle to rest on, in a way a bright overhead light doesn't.
A candlelit evening, inspired by the painters
Turn off the overhead lights. Light a few candles in one place, safely. Sit within their circle. Look at how the light falls on your hands, a cup, a face across the table. For a few minutes, you're inside a painting by La Tour.
A letter for candlelight
The First Letter is a short sensory meditation on receiving a letter, made to be read by candlelight on a winter evening. It's free, with a sample of my magazine, "(meditating) On Art". A small flame of attention, in the dark months.
Remember to take as much time as you need, and meet me at the next one.
Love, Evi