Entrance to the Village of Eragny

In 1884 Camille Pissarro, then 54, moved his family to Éragny, a small farming village on the river Epte in northern France. He would stay there until his death nineteen years later, and its fields, hedges and lanes became his main subject for the rest of his life. This is one of the first things he painted on arriving, a plain view of the road into the village, done in the loose, flecked Impressionist touch he had helped invent. Within a year or two he set it aside to try the tiny methodical dots of Seurat's younger circle, before drifting back to a freer hand. Pissarro rented the house at first and bought it in 1892 with money lent by his friend Monet. The canvas now hangs a long way from Éragny, in the Pola Museum of Art at Hakone in Japan.