The Louvre, Morning, Winter Sunlight, Hoar-Frost (First Series)

Pissarro was 70 when he painted this, and he had not been able to work outdoors for years. A chronic infection of the tear duct made wind and cold dangerous for his eyes, so from the 1890s he rented rooms with a view and painted the city from behind glass. In the winter of 1901 the window was at 28 Place Dauphine, on the Ile de la Cite, looking across the Seine at the Pont Neuf and the long front of the Louvre. He took the same view over and over and let the weather do the varying. Frost one morning, winter sun, fog, snow. He kept several canvases going at once and moved between them as the light changed. This one is the hoar frost, from the first of the two series he made from that window.