Paesaggio innevato a Louveciennes

By the winter of 1874, the village of Louveciennes, west of Paris, had gone quiet again. Four years earlier it had sat in the path of the Prussian army closing on the capital. Now Sisley, who lived nearby and knew these lanes, was out in the cold setting them down under fresh snow. That spring he was one of the roughly 30 artists who mounted the independent show later remembered as the first Impressionist exhibition. Look closely and the snow here is never plain white. It carries flecks of blue and grey, the color of the low winter sky, and a single small figure walks a road that narrows away into the distance. Sisley would return to paint this snow-covered country again and again over the next several years.