In the summer of 1869, Camille Pissarro, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Alfred Sisley decamped from Paris to paint alongside each other in the towns of Louveciennes and Bougival, embarking on a remarkable collaboration that would lay the foundations of the Impressionist movement. Painting en plein air, it was in these suburban towns west of Paris that these artists pioneered a radical new manner of painting, employing loose, summary brushwork to spontaneously capture the shifting atmospheric effects of light and weather. Over the next few years, these painters would hone their language of painting en plein air, working alongside each other to paint the suburban villages and surrounding landscape of these region, often focusing on the roads, bridges, and waterways connecting Paris to the country.

Pissarro had arrived at Louveciennes in the spring of 1869, along with his soon-to-be wife Julie Vellay and their two young children. Just over a year later, Pissarro—due to his Danish citizenship—was unable to enlist in the French army during the Franco-Prussian War. The artist and his family fled their home and remained in exile in London until July 1871. When they returned to Louveciennes, Pissarro’s house had been pillaged by the Prussian army and many of his paintings were destroyed.

Despite these challenges, Pissarro’s years at Louveciennes proved extremely productive. By the time that the family left the house in April 1872, Pissarro had produced more than seventy views of Louveciennes, including some twenty-two paintings focusing on the route de Versailles leading to and from the village center. Le relais de poste sur la route de Versailles, Louveciennes Louveciennes [The Post House on the Road from Versailles, Louveciennes], like the majority of Pissarro's views of the Route de Versailles, is structured around the plunging diagonal of the road. The receding lines bring the viewer down the path and then leads their vantage point up into the large expanse of dappled blue, indigo, and silvery sky. In this early autumn scene, green leaves slowly give way to red and umber tones—colors that are then repeated in the cobblestone road and the partially obscured house—as a flock of birds gather in the sky to begin their migration.