The Pont-Neuf in Snow and Fog

Early in 1902 snow came to Paris, and Pissarro watched it from the second floor of 28 Place Dauphine, at the western tip of the Île de la Cité. From his windows the Pont-Neuf, the oldest bridge still standing in the city, ran across the Seine to the Right Bank, crowded all day with carriages and horse-drawn omnibuses. That year he wrote to the German critic Julius Elias that he had caught winter effects that charmed him with their finesse, and that the view was an absolutely exquisite subject. Here the snow and the fog have drained most of the colour from the city. The far bank is little more than pale blocks in the haze, and what warmth remains is down on the bridge, in the traffic and the crowds. The picture may have been among the Pissarros shown at the Bernheim-Jeune gallery in Paris in February 1902, only weeks after he painted it.