eakins watches a dog take on the landscape

thanks wikimedia commons (public domain)

This might be a late spring/early summer dawn by the look of that sky. That is the kind of sky I see right now outside my window, though it's not around 1874 any more and I don't live in Pennsylvania.  Later it will burn off and the world will blaze and chirp under the sun, and hunting dogs will find shady places to sleep.  (This dog looks a great deal like our Briar.)  But right now, and in this intense Thomas Eakins oil sketch, it is still cool and green enough to have a look around while everyone else is sleeping.
Eakins (1844-1916) was and is one of the primary figures in American art history and a man of great complexity - have an introduction here.