Charing Cross Bridge, London

Pissarro first saw London in 1870, as a refugee from the Franco-Prussian War. Prussian troops were billeted in his house at Louveciennes outside Paris, and most of the paintings he had left behind there were destroyed. He came back in 1890 in altogether different circumstances. He was 60, his eldest son Lucien had just settled in London for good, and he spent the visit painting Hyde Park and the Thames. This view takes in the low railway bridge that carries trains into Charing Cross station. Out on the water, the passengers packed onto the river steamers are tiny separate daubs of red, yellow and blue, a habit left over from the pointillist technique he was then in the middle of abandoning. The Paris dealers Boussod, Valadon bought the canvas from him that October.