Giverny, Harvest Moon

After early artistic training at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Davis left for France in 1880 where he remained for nine years. After study at the Academie Julian, he spent his time painting out doors in the French artist colony in Fontainebleau, eventually settling near Barbizon. He would return to the United States in 1890, where he would establish a home in Mystic, Connecticut and formed a small artist colony there, introducing the French Barbizon style in America. His later landscapes embraced the new style of Impressionism, with a focus on cloud studies.




Giverny, Harvest Moon was likely painted during the artist’s time in France in the 1880s, and depicts a bright Harvest moon lying low on the horizon. The artist is working in a tonalist style that he had mastered while working in France, and uses a limited palette and strips of muted color for the strongly horizontal landscape and sky above. The title of the work indicates that it was painted in Giverny, the home of Claude Monet.