Obstwiese bei Sonnenuntergang

Charles-François Daubigny's 'Obstwiese bei Sonnenuntergang' (Orchard at Sunset) from 1877 is a late work documenting the Barbizon School's engagement with seasonal agricultural subjects at a particular moment of day. The orchard at sunset — the trees in silhouette or warmly backlit, the ground shadowing quickly — gave Daubigny a subject combining his mastery of atmospheric light effects with the rural subject matter that had defined his career. By 1877, a year before his death, Daubigny was recognized as a founding ancestor of Impressionism. The Museum der bildenden Künste in Leipzig holds this as part of a distinguished collection of French landscape painting.

The sunset subject places Daubigny in the tradition of atmospheric light studies he had pioneered: the warm horizontals of the setting sun contrasting with the cooler shadowed ground. Trees in an orchard provide both structural elements and silhouetted forms against the luminous sky. The handling is characteristically loose and atmospheric.