The Banks of the Marne in Winter

<p>This painting of a rural winter landscape is resolutely un-picturesque. Its dark color palette is uninterrupted by any majestic natural elements, such as towering trees or a glittering pond. Even early in his career, Camille Pissarro subverted traditional landscape painting by deliberately diverging from the pastoral scenes of his mentor, <a href="https://www.artic.edu/artists/34035">Camille Corot</a>. In this large, rectangular canvas, Pisarro applied paint heavily, often using a palette knife, in emulation of <a href="https://www.artic.edu/artists/34049/gustave-courbet">Gustave Courbet</a>, whose work is on view nearby. Just a few years after he made this work, Pissarro adopted a more immediate approach to landscape painting, working <em>en plein air</em> (outdoors) directly from nature rather than in a studio, a technique closely associated with the Impressionists.</p>