In 1855, Pissarro left the Caribbean, where he was born and raised, for Paris. There he began to study painting in earnest. In the spring of 1869, at the age of thirty-eight, he moved to Louveciennes, on the left bank of the Seine, about half an hour by train from Paris. He painted landscapes there and in nearby areas such as Bougival. This painting antedates his work as an Impressionist; in it, his use of a dark palette shows the influence of the Barbizon school. We can see, however, his interest in light in the rendering of the water’s surface on the Seine, which gives a foretaste of later developments in his style.