The ideal of the impressionist movement was to see everything instantly, in a glimpse that catches life on the move. But, in this painting, one of the movement’s founders is aiming for something stranger: the opposite of a view. Our vision is blocked by trees like bars across a window. They just appear randomly, as stuff does, getting between us and any sense of an all-encompassing vista. The houses through the trees don’t look that special, even if we could fully see them. Pissarro suggests the world is full of objects, none of them necessarily more important or meaningful than others, in this unmistakably modern painting.
• National Gallery, London