In the Forest

1874

Narcisse Diaz de la Peña

Painter, French, 1807 - 1876

A path enclosed almost entirely with trees stretches into a dense, sun-dappled forest before us in this horizontal landscape painting. The trunks, leaves, undergrowth, and part of the path closest to us are painted in shadowy tones of ash brown, brick red, and muted green. Sunlight from the left burnishes the canopies of trees in the middle distance to a muted gold. A patch of azure-blue sky is glimpsed above that copse. Deep in shadow, a woman wearing a dark garment and white cap sits huddled at the foot of a tree on the left. The path becomes deeply shadowed again as it moves into the far distance. The artist signed and dated the lower left, “N. Diaz, '74.”

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Artwork overview

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

M.E. Willems; (his estate sale, Maison d'Art, Brussels, 5 April 1897, no. 2, as Paysage);(Le Roy et Cie, Paris). (Galerie Georges Petit, Paris).[1] William A. Clark [1839-1925], New York; bequest 1926 to the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington; acquired 2014 by the National Gallery of Art.
[1] Early provenance information is from the Corcoran Gallery of Art accession worksheet, in NGA curatorial files. The date(s) of possession by the Galerie Georges Petit are not certain.

Associated Names

Inscriptions

lower left: N. Diaz, '74

Wikidata ID

Q46630120

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