T he present urban scene is an unusually early work by Armand Guillaumin, a founding member of the Impressionist movement as well as its longest-surviving proponent. He studied alongside Cézanne and met Pissarro at the Académie Suisse in 1866; he would work alongside them painting en plein air in Pontoise and Auvers-sur-Oise and would later exhibit with them at the First Impressionist Exhibition in 1874, the year this present work was executed. His rich paintings of the bucolic French landscape as well as the bustling Paris cityscape gained him much praise and many great accolades throughout his career.