After visiting Pontoise in 1866, when he was thirty-six, Pissarro often spent time there, until 1883, producing 300 oils and an enormous number of sketches and prints. Pontoise is an old town about forty kilometers northwest of Paris, on the Oise River, a branch of the Seine. Crops raised in Pontoise were shipped to Paris; it was particularly famous for its cabbages. In this painting, trees with spreading branches surround a cabbage patch. The style, filled with light, with the use of green and blue even in the shadows, is very characteristic of an Impressionist painter.