The Path to Le Chou, Pontoise

Pissarro spent the better part of two decades in and around Pontoise, a market town on the Oise northwest of Paris, and painted several hundred landscapes there without ever wandering far. This footpath, at a spot the locals called Le Chou, was worked in 1878, and these were lean years for him. The Impressionists were still barely selling, and Pissarro, supporting a growing family, kept turning out steady, unshowy views of cultivated fields and country lanes rather than anything grander. He was also, by then, a kind of teacher. A few years before this, the younger Cézanne had come out to Pontoise to paint beside him, and learned there to lighten his palette and trust the open air.