Twilight

In this small work, the silvery light of the sun setting, or the moon rising dominates the simple landscape. Cazin’s work was considered to be decidedly “modern” among contemporary art critics. His paintings demonstrate his shared interests with the Impressionist group, namely capturing the fleeting effects of light, weather, and atmosphere. The scale of this canvas also suggests that it may have been an out-of-doors study.

Theodore Childe described Cazin’s artistic approach in the following passage from the exhibition catalog of the artist’s work in New York City in 1893:

In landscape M. Cazin prefers to render those fugitive
effects which demand the most delicate observation and
absolute surety of eye. Vast plains, calm fields, the rose
tiles of a cottage roof emerging from pale foliage, a yellow
flower in a desert of sand, a cottage lost in the solitude of
the dunes of Picardy, the shimmering of the crescent moon
on the bosom of the sea, the moist and caressing mantle which
evening throws over weary nature — such are some of the typical themes of this poet of light, this painter of pantheistic harmonies.