Dove inherited the meager estate of his parents in 1933 and returned to Geneva, New York. The countryside of the Finger Lakes region and the family farm provided new subject matter for him during his five-year residence. The Green House was completed over the course of four days in April and is one of twelve paintings done in 1934.

The scene depicts a small green house, with a nearby yellow cottage and two unusual trees stripped of their foliage. Dove’s subdued shades of green and ochre are repeated throughout the composition, creating a harmonious and organic effect so often seen in his works. The houses and trees are irregular in their swelling and curving forms and suggest an energetic force through color and line that are characteristic of his abstracted paintings. Dove regularly made watercolors as studies for his oils by 1930. A related study for The Green House (Lane Collection, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) is less stylized and lighter in tonality than the present work.