Pavé de Chailly in the Fontainebleau forest

In the summer of 1865, Monet was 25 and staying at an inn at Chailly, on the edge of the Fontainebleau forest south of Paris, where a generation of landscape painters had gone to work directly from the trees. He had a huge project in mind: a picnic scene about four by six metres, meant to answer the picture by Manet that had scandalised Paris two years before. This quiet view of the paved forest road is one of the studies from that campaign. The great picnic canvas defeated him. He ran out of money, left it rolled up as security with a landlord, and only fragments of it survive today. The road held up better. Monet built its depth carefully, the ruts sharp in front and the trees softening as they recede toward the light at the end.