A Road in Louveciennes

When the Met received this small canvas in 1973, it had never been published, and two years later the museum showed it as Family Walking in the Park. In 1979 the art historian T. J. Clark recognised the spot, a road in Louveciennes, west of Paris, looking toward the Marly aqueduct. That aqueduct, built in the 17th century to carry water up to royal châteaux, is the grey mass at the top of the slope on the left. The same year the museum's Costume Institute studied the lady's clothes. Her tiny pink parasol and the cut of her dress belong to the years 1868 to 1874, which fits a date of about 1870. She and her companions are dressed for town. The boy in the blue jacket and the woman in black have been read both as part of their outing and as locals passing by.