In his later years, Pissarro painted several series of paintings based upon views of Paris. Each series was dedicated to a specific location in the city painted at various times of the day and during different seasons and weather conditions. This wintry scene, probably created in the early months of 1902, is part of a series he painted in his rented apartment at place Dauphine on the Île de la Cité.

We are looking directly west along the Seine. The Pont des Arts is in the middle distance and the Louvre is the large building on the right. On the left, Pissarro has included part of the square du Vert-Galant, a small public park named in honour of Henri IV, which contained a nineteenth-century equestrian statue of him. The picture shows Pissarro’s fascination with transient atmospheric effects, but he has contained these within a carefully structured composition.