This painting by Clarence Gagnon was executed en plein air in the Baie-Saint-Paul region of Quebec’s Charlevoix County in the late winter or early spring. With a farmhouse in the lower left, Gagnon’s emphasis is on the effect of the late afternoon’s light falling upon the hills and the distant valley. As is the case in many of his best works, the viewer can even sense the atmospheric qualities Gagnon observed; the cool, hard light providing a sense of the cold and dampness left once the sun had disappeared. It is a triumph from the hand of this foremost Canadian impressionist at the height of his artistic powers.
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Although born in Montreal, no location was more important to Clarence Gagnon's artistic legacy than Quebec's Charlevoix region. First visiting the area in the early twentieth century, Gagnon became captivated by its dramatic landscapes, heritage, and traditions. Baie-Saint-Paul became his Canadian home, where he lived between lengthy periods in France. Over his career, Gagnon transformed the surrounding countryside into some of the most iconic images in Canadian art. With luminous colour and an extraordinary handling of light, Gagnon rendered the everyday scenes of Charlevoix into beauty and poetry in paint.

Gagnon generally painted these oil "sketches," known as pochades for their ability to be carried in a pocket, in two sizes. This work is on the smaller of the two. He preferred to keep his sketches, and many remained at his apartment in Paris. Although he returned to Canada before the Second World War, the sketches stayed in his Paris apartment throughout the war. Gagnon died in 1942, but the apartment remained intact. After the war, his widow, Lucille Rodier Gagnon, returned to Paris and reclaimed the sketches. When she later sold them, frequently through William Watson, Blair Laing, and Walter Klinkhoff, she applied a label to the reverse, as in this case.