View of the Côte des Mathurins, Pontoise

Now at the Musée d'Orsay, this 1873 canvas shows the Côte des Mathurins at Pontoise — one of the agricultural hillside paths that characterized the Pontoise landscape above the Oise valley. Pissarro mapped this terrain through dozens of paintings across his Pontoise years, developing the intimate topographical knowledge that gave his landscapes their specificity. The 1873 date places this at the height of his first great Pontoise period, when he was working alongside Cézanne who was then living and painting at Auvers nearby. The Côte des Mathurins, with its steep hillside fields and farm buildings, provided one of his most characteristic compositional types.

The hillside path is organized through strong diagonal recession, with cultivated fields layered above and below the track. Pissarro's 1873 technique is at full maturity — confident, varied strokes respond to each motif's specific character. Warm ochre and green dominate, with the pale sky providing compositional closure above the hillside composition.