Camille Pissarro
1871
Oil paint on canvas
44.5 x 67.5 cm
Painted from a footbridge spanning the railroad tracks, this view shows a train leaving a recently built station in south London. Camille Pissarro fled Paris with his family in 1870 during the Franco-Prussian War and remained in London for over a year, painting the city and its outlying areas. Although the landscape depicted here was being transformed from open countryside to built-up suburbs, it is strangely devoid of people. Pissarro originally included a man on the grassy slope on the right but later painted him out.