Les champs au mois de juin

Charles-François Daubigny's 'Les champs au mois de juin' (The Fields in June) from 1874 belongs to his series of seasonal agricultural landscape subjects, documenting the Île-de-France and Oise valley at various stages of the agricultural year. June fields — green and growing, before harvest, under the long light of early summer — provided a subject of natural abundance that Daubigny treated with his characteristic atmospheric freshness. The Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University holds this work in a collection that includes significant examples of nineteenth-century French landscape painting, reflecting the American academic collecting tradition.

Daubigny renders the June fields with the loose, varied green brushwork that characterizes his mature plein-air approach. The sky is likely given generous space — he favored high horizons and dominant skies. The horizontality of the cultivated field naturally suits his tendency toward broad, atmospheric compositions that subordinate individual elements to overall effect.