The subdued palette of the subject trees sets them against a background of palest yellow into amber for a striking effect reminiscent of dawn. The artist, Eduard Caret, was born in Pont-Aven, in the region of Brittany, France in 1910. When he was a child, his family moved to the vast forests of Fontainebleu, some 35 miles southeast of Paris. Once the hunting grounds of France’s kings, this locale had become a center of French landscape painting. Caret embraced the naturalistic, romantic style very early in life. His father, a teacher at a local academy, encouraged his talent, which ultimately took the painter to the renowned École des Beaux-Arts in Paris.