The Banks of the Marne in Winter

In the winter of 1866 Pissarro, the oldest of the future Impressionists, painted the bare poplars and leaden heights of the Marne with a gravity his younger colleagues did not yet attempt. The broad, thinly hatched sky and the firm crust of the riverbank show him working from the country’s own sober palette — not yet the luminous freckle of his later years, but already honest plein-air observation in a large, mural-like format. Set against his better-known village scenes, this cold, spacious composition reveals the structural calm that underlies the whole Impressionist project. The painting is held in the Art Institute of Chicago.