雪中的新桥

By 1901 Camille Pissarro had largely given up painting outdoors. A doctor had warned him back in 1893 that dust, wind and bright sun would keep re-infecting his eyes, so for the last decade of his life he rented Paris rooms for their windows and painted what he could see from them. Late in 1900 he took an apartment at 28 place Dauphine, at the western tip of the Ile de la Cite, with a corner view over the river. Between that winter and his death in 1903 he produced roughly 60 canvases from those windows, the largest group he ever gave to a single spot. The bridge below is the Pont Neuf, the New Bridge, finished in 1607 under Henri IV and the oldest one still standing in Paris. He was 70 that winter, and he worked the same crossing through snow, fog and afternoon sun.