Camille Pissarro - The Route to Versailles, Louveciennes [1869]

Camille Pissarro - The Route to Versailles, Louveciennes [1869], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

In 1869, Pissarro moved to No. 22 on the road to Versailles in the Paris suburb of Louvciennes. He was joined by Claude Monet who was then at nearby Saint Michel. In the winter of 1869/70, they both painted snow scenes showing this roadway from varying angles. The road to Versailles, on the north side of the village, afforded a superb view of Paris in the distance. The impressionists inherited from the Barbizon artists of a generation earlier an interest in the representation of winter, particularly, the challenge of the rendering of snow. Pissarro's early works are relatively rare because the German troops who had been billeted in his house on the road to Versailles during the Franco-Prussian War had wrecked many of them.

[Walters Art Museum, Baltimore - Oil on canvas, 38.4 x 46.3 cm]