Paul Emmanuel Péraire (French, 1829-1893)
Blossoming Tree and Farmyard
Oil on canvas

Signed lower left P. Peraire. 10 x 16 inches (25 x 41 cm), the frame 12 x 18 inches (30 x 46 cm). Carved gilt swept frame with a name plate. Good original condition, unlined.

The whole weight of the paint is in the flowering branches. The tree at the left is laid on thick and worked wet into wet, while the grey sky behind it is scraped almost bare.

A farm sits behind the tree, its white wall catching the only other light in the picture, a tiled roof above it and a long thatched barn to the right. A path of pale earth runs up toward it, and a cockerel and his hens feed along the grass in the right foreground beside a heap of loose straw laid on as thickly as the blossom. Dark conifers close the view at the right. Each bird is made of a few strokes, the grass is dragged in short touches of acid green, and the sky is so thin the weave shows through.