John Singer Sargent In an Orchard

The rich, wet facture and the broad brushwork are distinctly Manetesque, and Marc Simpson has suggested a specific relationship between Manet's "Les Hirondelles" of 1873 (Stiftung Sammlung E.G. Buhrle, Zurich) and the present work. Aspects of the composition, its high horizon, undifferentiated green foreground space and the triangular shape of the figures, do recall Manet's sketch of his wife and mother sitting in a field at Berck-sur-mer, which was rejected at the Salon of 1874, but which Sargent would have seen in the Manet retrospective exhibition at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1884.