Plum Trees in Blossom, Éragny

Plum trees in blossom at Éragny were a spring subject Pissarro returned to across the 1890s, finding in the brief flowering of plum and cherry orchards an annual event that could be painted fresh each year without repetition. The 1894 canvas now at Ordrupgaard in Denmark shows this seasonal moment in the Éragny orchard — pale pinkish-white blossoms emerging before the leaves on branches still bearing the structure of winter. The Ordrupgaard collection, focused on French Impressionism, holds this work among its significant examples of Pissarro's late orchard subjects.

Plum blossom, slightly darker and more pink than pear or apple, requires Pissarro to distinguish between the warm white of blossom and the cool blue-white of sky behind and beyond the trees. He renders the flower clusters with rapid, clustered strokes of varied warm and cool whites and pale pinks.