Unseen in public since it was painted and bought 'new' by the ancestor of its current owner, The Apple Orchard is both a significant rediscovery and a very personal expression of light and nature, set in the garden of Claus's Flanders studio home, Zonneschijn. Painted circa 1910, the composition represents a marked departure from Claus's earlier interest in the naturalistic depiction of rural life influenced by Jules Bastien-Lepage, towards a post-impressionistic exploration of luminosity and spacial planes.

Superimposed over the house and garden in the background is a close-up observation of the branch of an apple tree, the sun's rays glinting off the shiny ripe fruit. This juxtaposition of the far and the near, giving equal weight to both, results in a flattening of the picture plane akin to Japanese woodcuts, much in vogue at the time; while the play of light clearly shows the influence of the Impressionists, notably Claude Monet, whose work Claus admired, whether in Paris in the 1880s or at the 1904 Libre Esthétique exhibition in Brussels. The gardens at Zonneschijn were to Claus what Giverny was to his French contemporary.