Manhã, Dia Nublado, Ruão

By 1896 Pissarro was in his mid-60s, his eyes troubling him, and he had taken to working from upstairs windows where he could paint under cover. From a room at the Hotel d'Angleterre in Rouen he looked out on the Grand Pont, the iron bridge over the Seine, and painted it over and over through shifting weather. This is the grey, overcast version. What drew him was the working river below: the smoke, the barges, the carriages and dock hands crossing the bridge. He wrote to his family of wanting exactly that motif, the iron bridge on a wet day with much traffic and the whole scene full of animation, the mist softening the factories in the distance.