This is a third painting based on my early spring trip to the Jacques-Cartier in Québec. I described this place before, in connection with my second painting of the River, entitled “Jacques Cartier River, Morning Mist”. This painting is based on a part of the river that embraces a little island. The location of some yellow birches (Betula alleghaniensis) near the water provided an opportunity to show their structure.

I was fortunate to catch this very short period, when the scales of the leaf buds have opened but before the leaves have opened. In another few days leaves would pop out, but on this day only the reddish, coppery colored leaf buds were visible. Multiplied by tens of thousands, they clothed the mountains with a soft redish glow. The Bebb’s willows (Salix bebbiana) and alder trees (Alder rugosa) in the foreground are also decorated with with redish catkins, the downey flower spikes that look like caterpillars dangled from the twigs.

The balsam firs and red spruce trees (Abies balsamea and Picea rubens) helped define the distances of the mountains. As the distance from the viewer increases, the trees appear smaller, increasingly bluer, and more faded.