La Gare de Lordship Lane, Dulwich

Pissarro painted this outside London, in the winter of 1870 to 1871, after the Franco-Prussian War had driven him and his family out of France. They settled in Norwood, in the city's southern suburbs, and he went out to paint the new railway that was turning open country into commuter streets. Standing on a footbridge, he caught a train pulling away from Lordship Lane station under a smoky sky. It is often called the first Impressionist painting to make a train the real subject, and Pissarro had lately seen Turner's steam-and-speed railway canvas in the National Gallery. The land here was filling with houses, yet he left it oddly empty. He had first put a man on the grassy bank at the right, then painted him out.