Statue of Henri IV and the Hotel de la Monnaie, Morning, Sun

Camille Pissarro was past 70 and could no longer work comfortably out of doors — a chronic eye ailment made wind and dust punishing — so he painted Paris from apartment windows instead. In the winter of 1901 he took rooms on the Île de la Cité, at the tip of the Pont Neuf, looking straight onto the bronze equestrian statue of Henri IV, with the Hôtel de la Monnaie, the old royal mint, along the far bank. He worked the same view across the hours and seasons, some two dozen canvases in this campaign alone. This is the morning, low sun catching the quay. Only three of them look from exactly this angle before he turned his easel toward the Louvre.