Twilight in the Cedars at Darien, Connecticut

Painted in 1872 and held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, this is one of three Kensett paintings from the same year and location that together form an extended meditation on the quality of light over Long Island Sound at different atmospheric conditions and times of day. The cedar trees of Darien give this work a stronger foreground element than his most reductive Luminist compositions, their dark forms contrasting with the twilight glow of the water. Together with the other Sound paintings of 1872, this work represents the summation of Kensett's Luminist investigation.

The cedar trees in the foreground are rendered with greater specificity than the atmospheric distances—their dark, distinctive silhouettes providing a compositional anchor from which the eye moves into the luminous space of the Sound. Kensett's paint handling shifts from the careful tree description in the foreground to the most delicate, atmospheric handling in the glowing sky and water.