Luminism

Luminism means roughly, the painting of light and is applied specifically to the American landscape painters of the Hudson River school from about 1830–70

Misty blue-green twilight view across a calm river to a dark far bank with scattered orange lights; a long low barge drifts at left and a lone figure stands on the muddy near shore — James McNeill Whistler
*Nocturne: Blue and Silver - Chelsea* (1871)
Tate

Many of the paintings produced by the Hudson River school were dominated by intense and often dramatic light effects.

In British art a form of luminism underlies James Abbott McNeill Whistler’s ‘Nocturnes’. The term is also sometimes applied to neo-impressionist paintings in which the divisionist technique leads to a marked all over luminosity.

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