Le Pont Boieldieu, Rouen, soleil couchant

Pissarro was in his mid-sixties in 1896 and a recurring infection in one eye had made working outdoors in wind and dust a risk he could not afford. His answer was to rent rooms with a view. He spent two stretches of that year in Rouen, painting from hotel windows above the quays, and came away with a run of canvases of the same reach of the Seine at different hours and in different weather. The Pont Boieldieu carried the road over the river to the industrial bank, and what he set around it is the traffic of a working port, masts and barges and chimney smoke standing against the low sun. The canvas entered the Birmingham collection in 1950.