This painting by Franklin Brownell captures the rural character of what is likely the Gatineau countryside in Quebec, just beyond the edge of Ottawa’s expanding urban life. Under a broad, luminous sky, the scene features a modest cluster of farm buildings and houses anchored by a church spire, a familiar landmark in many Quebec villages. Brownell organizes the composition horizontally, allowing the open foreground meadow to lead the eye gently toward the village.

Brownell’s handling of paint is fresh, reflecting his close study of Impressionism and his commitment to working directly from nature. Loose, broken brushstrokes animate the grasses and foliage, while a light, high-key palette conveys the clarity of daylight and seasonal warmth. Probably painted near his Ottawa home in  the Gatineau area where he occasionally sketched with Frank Hennessey as his companion, Franklin Brownell was a key figure in the development of Canadian landscape painting in the early twentieth century.

Brownell was a founding member of the Canadian Art Club and exhibited with the Royal Canadian Academy and the Ontario Society of Artists. Brownell also showed internationally at the 1893 Chicago World's Columbian Exposition, the 1900 Paris World's Fair, the 1904 Louisiana Purchase (World's Fair) Exhibition in St. Louis, and the British Empire Exhibitions of 1924 and 1925 in Wembley (He was awarded a bronze medal for his R.C.A. diploma work, The Photographer, 1896, oil on canvas, 61.2 x 51.2 cm., which is now in the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa (Access. No. 126).