Night Landscape with Sky and Crescent Moon

Gabriel Villard was a French artist working in the late nineteenth century. Night Landscape with Sky and Crescent Moon is a pastel and chalk drawing on gray-beige charcoal paper, and nearly the entire surface is sky. A crescent moon sits just above center, glowing white against deep blue-gray atmosphere that grades from near-black at the horizon to a slightly lighter gray above. Below, a faint band of water or land catches a thin line of reflected light.