Considered Hungary’s best 19th-century landscape painter, the Transylvanian Paál began his artistic studies at the Viennese Academy, before going on a government scholarship to Munich in 1869. There he was impressed by a show of French Realist and Barbizon painting. He followed his closest friend Mihály Munkácsy to Düsseldorf, thereafter dividing his time between Düsseldorf and Beilen, Holland, with its nearby woods. He settled at Barbizon in 1873, in the Fontainebleau forest. In this plein-air study, sold, as indicated by the stamp, at the estate sale following his untimely death, Paál captures the delicate glow of sunshine through a birch thicket. (OB)