This canvas was painted in the Morvan, a district west of Dijon in Burgundy, which Corot visited frequently on painting expeditions in the early 1840s. His father's family had originated there, and he must have felt a particular affinity with the region. A peasant saws timber; his wife helps him. Trees and distant village buildings are silhouetted against the sky, irradiated with the fresh cool light of early morning, and long shadows fall on the grass, where we can just make out a glint of white plumage on the back of a goose with dun-feathered wings waddling out to graze.