Breze v Soncu (Birches in the Sun) was produced during Jakopič’s time in Škofja Loka and features one of the painter’s early attempts at depicting trees opposite a source of light, looking towards the sun. This is an extraordinary method in Western art and its invention can be attributed to Jakopič, who produced a whole series of similarly composed paintings in the first decade of the 1900s, first in Stranska Vas around the year 1901. There, at the inn of Selan, the painter spent a few weeks again in the summer of 1905. Jakopič’s motifs characterized trees in a suggestive manner. These are black poplars, recognizable from some earlier paintings from this area. The painter discusses arboreal identities in correspondence with Matija Jama, e.g. in a letter from 1910 in which Jama corrects Jakopič’s assertion that aspens were birches. Here, the small format hints at the plein-air work process, produced in situ directly before the motif. The colors used are closer to that of a realistic, descriptive palette, but it is nonetheless transposed into a generalized scheme of blue, yellow, and green with pink effects of light above the horizon and reflexes on the tree trunks. Jakopič here attempted to depict the nature of sunlight at noon.