A Sous-bois Still Life with a Snake

A spare, strange composition. A large rust-orange mushroom sits at center, with a toad crouched in its shadow and a smaller pale mushroom toppled on its side at left. A snake with gold and black patterned skin rises behind the rust mushroom, its mouth open wide as it lunges toward a pale cream-and-black butterfly hovering in the air above. A dark tree trunk rises behind them, with earth-brown ground rendered in thin, scumbled paint. The whole painting is reduced to a few elements — one mushroom, one snake, one butterfly, one toad — against an almost empty ground. Looser and more atmospheric than Marseus's denser forest floor compositions.