Route de Versailles, Louveciennes, after Rain

The rain has only just stopped. The cobbles are still wet enough to hold the sky, and a pale yellow light is breaking through the clouds over the far end of the road, catching the tops of the trees and the fronts of the houses on the right. A carriage and a few figures are out on the road again. This is the route de Versailles where it passes through Louveciennes, a village above the Seine just west of Paris. Pissarro was living on this road from 1869, and he painted it again and again in different weather. He signed and dated this one 1870 in the lower right corner. It belongs to a private collection, and the catalogue of his paintings published in 2005 lists it as number 153, a canvas of about 50 by 61 centimetres.