Landscape at Eragny

By 1897, when this canvas was painted and subsequently acquired by the Musée d'Orsay, Pissarro had been living at Éragny for thirteen years and had accumulated an intimate knowledge of every field, orchard, and road in the surrounding countryside. A landscape at Éragny from this date is a late expression of this accumulated knowledge — the painter returning to a familiar motif with the confidence and selectivity of long experience. His late landscapes show a synthesis of various technical experiments, the broken brushwork of mature Impressionism enriched by his brief engagement with Neo-Impressionism and his deepened understanding of colour relationships.

Late Pissarro landscapes are characterised by a slightly more open, airy quality than his Pontoise work — the Norman countryside being flatter and brighter than the hillier Île-de-France terrain. His colour relationships have become more confident: he can set complementaries against each other or use analogous colour harmonies with the assurance of long practice.