ONE of the dividends of the return to favor of representational painting — painting based on what the eye sees in the big world “out there” — is that the modern city is once again a serious pictorial subject. From the beginning of the modern movement in the 19th centory until well into the 20th, the metropolis has inspired a great many painters, and now we seem to be in another period when painters are determined to win back some of this fertile terrain from the photographers and the movie makers.

For some time now, Yvonne Jacqueue has been one of the best of these painters intent upon reinterpretting the urban subject, and the new work she is showing at Brook Alexander’s, 20 West 57th Street (through May 5), marks an interesting turn in her development. She has taken up one of the most difficult problems of representational painting — the depiction of nocturnal light — and added to this challenge the task of giving us some beguiling, airy views of her city scenes. The results are for extraordinary “Night Paintings’- three of Manhattan, and one of Belfast, Me.

We see these city night scenes from “above” — from either a high window or, in the case of the Belfast painting, what must have been a helicopter flight. This into a midnight blue‐brown space. beautifully articulated in its dose‐valued textures, brilliant jewels of light — from auto headlights, bridge lights, electric signs, etc. — are set with a lyric precision. In the paintings and the pastel studies on the same themes, both the romance of the nocturnal city and the romance of painting are given memorable expression.