Banks of the river Marne in winter 1866

Camille Pissarro painted *Banks of the River Marne in Winter* with oil on canvas. Pissarro was part of a radical group of artists working in France who sought to democratize art. Known as Impressionists, they took painting outside the Academy and into the everyday world. Pissarro’s landscape depicts a scene of rural labor. In the bottom left, we can see a figure walking along a path. A humble village sits nestled in the landscape. This unassuming image embodies the Impressionist desire to depict modern life. It also expresses the artist's own anarchist politics which held that art should serve a social function by representing ordinary people and places. Pissarro was committed to challenging the traditional hierarchy of art, where historical and religious subjects were privileged. To understand Pissarro’s project fully, historians explore sources such as exhibition reviews and artists' letters. The meaning of art is always contingent on its social and institutional context.