View of the village of Osny

In the spring of 1883 Pissarro was living at Osny, a village just outside Pontoise, and his dealer Paul Durand-Ruel was getting ready to give him his first large solo exhibition in Paris, which opened that May. Durand-Ruel bought this canvas directly from the artist on 25 April, a few weeks before. It looks down over the rooftops of Osny, and Pissarro signed and dated it in the lower right corner. Nine years later the picture went to Chicago. The Palmers, a Chicago collecting family, bought it in 1892, and the next year it was lent to the World's Columbian Exposition, the great fair held in the city in 1893. It came to the Art Institute of Chicago as a gift in 1922, and the museum sold it in 1949. It has been in private hands since, and last appeared at auction in 2012.