Details mesmerize in the art of Merrill French, from the geometry of architecture to the weave of branches or the anatomy of muscle. A distant bend in a pebble-lined track anticipates the next train. Light bevels a wrought-iron curl. A lone pair of country headlights announces the late-autumn dusk.

By road or rail, Merrill French’s subjects travel great distances, from city to town and country to country. They alight on the brownstone and brick edifices of the East or West Village, the rippled haunches of Saratoga’s racehorses, the rocky surf along the Maine coast, the shingled cottages on a Nantucket corner, the reflection of cornice and cement seams in the glass of a London tavern or the windswept grasses where Shetland ponies graze. But location is not arrived at by careful detail alone. Its essence surfaces in the fluid interplay between light and shadow, shifting moods releasing the fixed moment from time.