The Road to Versailles, Louveciennes,Morning Frost 1871

This painting by Camille Pissarro, showing the road to Versailles in Louveciennes, was made with oil paint, a traditional fine art material that was becoming increasingly available and affordable in tubes in the 19th century. Pissarro applied the paint in short, broken strokes, a hallmark of Impressionism. Look closely and you’ll see the texture of the paint itself, built up layer upon layer. It’s clear that Pissarro made this work relatively quickly. But consider too that even this most modern approach to art-making is still dependent on older systems of labor. Pigments had to be mined and processed, brushes manufactured, canvases woven and primed. And Pissarro himself, though part of a radical avant-garde, was still reliant on the market to sell his paintings and support his livelihood. So, while the Impressionists sought to break free from academic tradition, they were also participants in the emerging culture of mass production and consumption. In foregrounding the material reality of paint, Pissarro invites us to consider all of these factors, broadening our sense of what the painting is actually “of.”