Willard Metcalf was a pioneer of Impressionism in America. Born in Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1858, he studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where he fell under the influence of the American Barbizon school of William Morris Hunt, who taught him a realistic approach to wooded landscapes.

It wasn’t until a sojourn in France, when Metcalf was in his twenties, that he was exposed to the looser style of brushwork sweeping the Continent. He first studied at the famous independent atelier in Paris, Académie Julian, then moved to the town of Giverny, where the leader of the Impressionists, Claude Monet, had settled. Here, in the deep forests of the French countryside, Metcalf began his first experiments in impressionist brushwork. He learned to paint en plein air, in direct contact with nature, using dabs of color to capture atmospheric effects of light and air.