The Field and the Great Walnut Tree in Winter, Eragny

This 1885 Philadelphia Museum canvas shows a large walnut tree in winter at Éragny — a subject of stark simplicity, the bare branches of a single great tree filling the composition against a pale winter sky. The painting was made the year Pissarro moved permanently to Éragny, and the great walnut tree in the field became one of his recurring subjects through all seasons. This winter version, with snow on the fields and the tree stripped to its essential structure, is among his most austere compositions — a near-abstract study of branching form against atmospheric tone that anticipates aspects of twentieth-century landscape painting.

Pissarro gives the walnut tree's branching structure careful attention — each major limb and its sub-branches traced against the pale sky. The snow field is rendered in cool blue-greys and pale lavenders. The composition is vertical and frontal, the great tree dominating. Brushwork for the branches is precise and linear, contrasting with the softer treatment of sky and snow.