Louis Aime Japy

A shepherd returning with his flock at sunset is a familiar theme in Japy's work, which is largely devoted to rural landscapes. The artist was born in Berne, a town in Doubs, a department in the Franche-Comté region of eastern France along the border with Switzerland. He preferred to work there and in the Jura, an adjacent region dominated by the Jura mountains. The culturally distinct area, with its local languages, offered varied topography, which Japy explored in his scenes of nature undisturbed by modern life. This scene is similar to that pictured in "Les Brumes de l'Aurore" (The Dawn Mist), a late vertical format landscape in the Musée Gatien-Bonnet in Lagny-sur-Marne that was shown in the Salon of 1904.