Berggruen Gallery in San Francisco will present ‘Stephen Hannock: Recent Nocturnes in the Gloaming’ from 29 October 2026 to 7 January 2027. The exhibition is organised in two parts and continues the American painter’s long engagement with luminous landscape, a body of work the gallery places within the tradition of American landscape painting and describes as neo-Luminist.
The first part, ‘Nocturnes in the Gloaming’, focuses on the soft, diffuse light that falls between day and night, a subject Hannock has pursued for decades. It brings together ten oil paintings, each displayed with the preliminary study that preceded it. Hannock builds these surfaces in layers and polishes the paint by machine between applications, producing a finish the gallery likens to velvet. Recent examples listed by the gallery include ‘Bay Area Nocturne with Encroaching Fog’, ‘Flooded River with Luminous Corridor’ and ‘Silverado Dawn with Cascading Fog’, all painted in 2026.
The second part, ‘From the River Tyne to the Port of San Francisco’, follows a maritime thread linking Newcastle upon Tyne with the Bay Area. At its centre is ‘Arrival of the Steam-Tug Eppleton Hall: The Port of San Francisco, March 1970’, which commemorates the last surviving historic steam tug from Newcastle and its voyage of roughly 11,000 miles west to San Francisco. Hannock connects that journey to the renewed creative energy of the former industrial city, a theme also present in the acrylic-and-collage canvas ‘Northern City Renaissance: The River Tyne with the Launch of the Eppleton Hall’ (2026).
The section also draws on Hannock’s friendship of some forty years with Sting, who comes from Newcastle and set his musical ‘The Last Ship’ there. Four hand-coloured serigraphs that Hannock made for the publication accompanying the musical are shown alongside new paintings.
Hannock lives and works between New York City and Williamstown, Massachusetts. His work is held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, and in 2013 he received the Frederic E. Church Award from The Olana Partnership. On the opening day, Thursday 29 October, he will discuss the work with Emma Acker, Curator of American Art at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, at 4.30pm, ahead of an evening reception.
