Il giardino delle Tuileries in una mattina di primavera

By 1899 Pissarro was nearly 70 and could no longer stand outdoors at an easel for long, since a chronic eye infection made wind and dust painful. So he rented a large apartment at 204 rue de Rivoli, high above the Tuileries garden, and painted the view straight through the window. He made more than a dozen canvases of this one stretch of park across the seasons. This is spring: budding trees, a soft blue sky, and down at the centre a woman pushing a child in a pram along the gravel. From that height the strollers become small dabs of colour moving between the flowerbeds. Pissarro sold most of the series to his dealer Durand-Ruel within months of finishing it.