Apple Trees at Damiette

Apple trees in blossom or in fruit were a recurring subject in Impressionist painting — from Pissarro's Normandy orchards to Sisley's spring trees — and Guillaumin's 1893 canvas of apple trees at Damiette, now in Aberdeen's museum collections, represents his engagement with this tradition. Damiette is a locality in the Creuse region that Guillaumin visited during his extended stays at Crozant, and the orchard subject offered him the warm-cool contrast between blossoming or leafed trees and the surrounding landscape that suited his palette. Aberdeen's collection acquired the work as part of its engagement with French nineteenth-century painting, the Scottish municipal museums having been active buyers of Impressionist work in the early twentieth century. By 1893 Guillaumin's colour was fully saturated, and the apple trees at Damiette would have been painted with the same directness he brought to the valley rocks and river surfaces nearby.

Oil on canvas with Guillaumin's mature handling applied to an orchard subject. The apple trees' varied foliage creates a texture of individual strokes that read as a whole from a distance but reveal energetic particulars up close. The ground beneath and sky above provide simpler, broader passages that give the eye rest between the more complex tree forms. The colour range for a fruit orchard subject would include warm ochre-greens in the foliage against cooler grass and sky.