The artist Clarice Beckett saw nature as all powerful. A key member of Australian tonalism, a movement of the 1920s and 30s that perceived images as a sum of tonal relationships, her spiritual impulses drove her to capture natural light. She painted landscapes with urgency, evoking the atmospheric effects of warm sunrises, calm sunsets, and cold nights in soft lyrical strokes. Though Beckett’s work was widely recognized after her death, during her life critics misinterpreted her misty style as weakness. “The Present Moment” boasts 130 paintings by Beckett. They will be thematically exhibited, with the order of the works charting the chronology of a single day—from first light to darkness. —E.C.