Der Pont-Neuf, Sonnenschein (zweite Serie)

By 1902 Pissarro was in his early seventies and his eyes were failing. A doctor had warned him off dust, wind, and glare, so the old open-air painter who had spent his life in the fields now worked from windows. He took rooms on the Île de la Cité and painted the Pont-Neuf, the oldest bridge in Paris, over and over from the same spot, in sun and rain and snow, tracking the traffic and the crowds on the stone below. This is one of the sunlit versions. He kept at the series through 1902 and into the next year, and died in 1903, still working the city from behind glass.