The Stairs and a Corner of the Garden at Eragny

The garden at Éragny-sur-Epte was Pissarro's most private working space — his own land, his own plantings, maintained by his wife Julie and known intimately across two decades of residence. The 1897 canvas at Ordrupgaard shows one corner of this garden: the steps leading to an upper terrace, a structural element that introduced geometry into the organic growth of a working French garden. Such partial, intimate views of familiar spaces — a corner, a path, a particular arrangement of plants — characterise Pissarro's late garden work, which avoids the panoramic ambition of his public landscapes in favour of domestic particularity.

The garden corner composition uses the steps to create a clear vertical-horizontal relationship within the informal plant growth surrounding them. Pissarro renders the varied garden vegetation — different leaf shapes, flower colours, plant heights — with a rich but controlled colour vocabulary that keeps the corner from becoming visually chaotic.