Snow at Louveciennes

Camille Pissarro made this small oil on panel painting showing trees and houses blanketed by a heavy snow at Louveciennes, the village west of Paris where he lived. Using a limited palette of shades of white, brown, blue, tan, gray, and green to evoke the gray skies and freshly fallen snow of a cold winter day, Pissarro created a scene that has the freshness and spontaneity of a work painted outdoors. Only the footsteps of a solitary figure, walking below the screen of trees, break the silence of this intimate and poetic winter scene.