Landscape at Louveciennes (Autumn)

Pissarro painted this quiet autumn road at Louveciennes, just west of Paris, in 1870, and the timing could hardly have been worse. That summer the Franco-Prussian War broke out. By September Prussian troops had reached the village and requisitioned the Pissarros' house, using it as a base. When the painter finally came back, he found that of roughly 1,500 canvases left behind, only about 40 had survived. Soldiers had used many of the rest as mats and aprons in the wet. This autumn road is one of the pictures that escaped, carried to London when Pissarro fled the fighting.