Côte des Grouettes, near Pontoise

By the spring of 1878 Pissarro had been painting around Pontoise, northwest of Paris, on and off since 1866, and for part of that time the younger Cézanne had worked at his side in the fields, the two of them learning from each other. This is one of those ordinary corners: a path dropping away past thick green foliage toward a few houses, a couple of walkers on it, a small patch of purple flowers in the lower left. He built the surface out of short, broken strokes laid over one another, so the light seems to flicker across the leaves. Years later his son Ludovic-Rodo tried to pin down exactly where the spot was, and could not.