The Rainbow, Pontoise

By April 1877 the Impressionists had opened their third group show in Paris, and among Pissarro's landscapes hung this wide view of the fields around Épluches, seen from the heights of Pontoise where he was then living. A rainbow had long been a prize subject in painting, usually a sign from heaven or a piece of romantic drama. Here it is only weather. A storm has crossed the valley and is pulling away. The near fields lie dark under cloud, and about halfway across the canvas the light breaks through and settles on a cluster of farm houses, bright against the grey. The arc itself is thin and low, the kind you actually see for a minute before it fades. He painted these flat working fields in every season and hour through the 1870s, and this is one of the few where the sky does something you could set a clock by.