Under Apple Blossom (1901) is a beautiful, sensitive example of Edwin Harris’s en plein work. Twenty years earlier in 1880 Harris had enrolled at Verlat’s Royal Academy in Antwerp. Harris was greatly influenced by Charles Verlat who advocated working directly from nature, or ‘en plein-air’. Keen to apply the skills he’d learned in Antwerp, Harris first travelled to Newlyn in 1881 and then onto Brittany, for two successive summers, before settling in Newlyn in 1883. There Harris honed his en plein air approach and square brush technique which we observe in his treatment of the orchard meadow in Under Apple Blossom.

Harris’s subject matter revealed a particular sensitivity to the women of the fishing village and this empathy continued throughout his career and is much in evidence in the tender and beautifully rendered way in which the artist has composed the young woman and child in the present work.

Harris’s articulation in oil paint of the dappled sunlight filtering through the apple trees onto the figures and meadow below, is particularly wonderful. Under Apple Blossom is presented in its original oak frame which has been regilded. One of the most captivating works by this pioneer of the Newlyn School.