Forest in the Morning Light

Asher Brown Durand

National Gallery of Art

Cool light filters through a thick, verdant forest in this vertical landscape painting. Most of the trees have high canopies with celery, matcha, and olive-green leaves. Moss carpets the trunks of five trees looming over us from across a narrow brook. Dead, sienna-brown tree limbs with sharp, broken branches lie scattered in the dense vegetation on the forest floor. The trees and undergrowth recede into the distance where a gap reveals a glimpse of a blue-gray mountain silhouetted against a milky sky. The artist signed the lower right, “ABD.”