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The article discusses the depiction of the night by painters. It notes that the painters' perception of the night often have been affected by the cultural preoccupations and technological progress of their times. It describes the paintings of Vincent Van Gogh titled "The Starry Night" and "The Night Café." It relates the devotion of painter John Atkinson Grimshaw to the night. It presents an overview of the popularity of the secular nightscape in the middle of the 17th century. It cites several painting exhibitions of the secular nightscape.

The article focuses on the painters in New York City. Lisbeth Firmin, a painter in a storefront studio in a small town in New York, use to paint the city's street scenes. Firmin shows her work at Michael Ingbar Gallery, where painting and photography by a number of artists with an affinity for architecture is displayed. Ironically, Firmin and most of her coevals tend to remove the masses of people from their paintings, focusing more on mood and structures, whether anonymous dwellings, instantly recognizable landmarks or the formidable skyline. These painters are part of a multifaceted tradition that flowered a century ago when Ashcan School artists like John Sloan limned quotidian life on the Lower East Side and Childe Hassam delighted in celebratory flags fluttering from the facades of fashionable Fifth Avenue. New York's bridges have been a theme of perpetual fascination for painters.

The article details how photorealist painter Richard Estes has been discovering new inspiration in far-flung realms of nature. His paintings possessed a technical virtuosity and luminosity as well as a striking sense of detail and perspective. One of the noticeable factors that runs through his work, particularly the New York cityscapes, is shimmering reflective surfaces. Various museums which showcase Estes' paintings included the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts and the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum of Art in Madrid, Spain.

Artist Pablo Picasso's "Boy with a Pipe," 1905, broke the world auction record for a painting in May when it sold for $104.2 million at Sotheby's New York. The soporific allegedly flavors the mood of many of Picasso's paintings of this period. The" Boy" had a salubrious effect on other lots included in the sale, establishing new world auction records for Sir Alfred Munnings ( $7.8 million), Jean-Frederic Bazille ( $5.3 million), William Blake ( $3.9 million) and Raoul Dufy ( $3.1 million).