Statue of Henri-IV, Early Spring (First Series)

Late in 1900 Camille Pissarro, then 70, rented an apartment at 28 place Dauphine, on the western tip of the Île de la Cité, and this is what lay under his window. The bronze rider is Henri IV, the king who saw the Pont-Neuf finished in 1607, and the little garden at the foot of the bridge is still named the Vert-Galant after his nickname, a nod to the love affairs he kept up late into life. Here it is early spring 1901. The trees around the pedestal are only just coming into bud, a haze of copper and orange over bare branches, and a few walkers cross the open ground at the left. The canvas found a buyer within the year, and in February 1902 it hung among 13 of his pictures in a joint show with Claude Monet at the Bernheim-Jeune gallery in Paris.