Effet de neige à l'Hermitage, Pontoise

A snow effect, painted in the winter of 1874 to 1875. The Impressionists were drawn to snow because it emptied a familiar view of its usual colours and forced them to find what was left, the faint blues and warm greys in the shadows on a field that looks plain white at a glance. Pissarro knew these slopes of l'Hermitage in every season and had painted them green and gold, so laying them under snow was a way of testing the same ground again in harder conditions. The picture holds a balance between something caught quickly in the cold and enough detail to set you on the exact road. Bare trees and a few small figures break the white, and smoke drifts up from the low houses at the bottom of the slope.