Before relocating to France in 1855, Camille Pissarro spent three years in Venezuela, where he painted with the Danish artist Fritz Melbye. The artists first arrived at the port of La Guaira in 1852, staying there for three months before moving to a house close to the centre of the capital Caracas.

These Venezuelan works show Pissarro’s early interest in representing everyday life and common people, a thread that would run throughout the entirety of his career. In the present work, the artist represents the town of El Cardonal, in the Venezuelan state of La Guaira. ‘Ávila’ in the title refers to El Ávila, the Spanish name given to the mountain represented by Pissarro in the background.

Drawings from Pissarro’s stay in Venezuela are rare, with a number of his works destroyed when his Louveciennes studio was ransacked during the 1870 Franco-Prussian War. His drawings from this period are in such international museums as The Ashmolean Museum of Art, Oxford; The Museum of Fine Arts, Caracas; The National Art Gallery, Caracas and the Central Bank of Venezuela.