In December 1852 Camille Pissarro travelled from his native St Thomas to Venezuela accompanied by his friend and fellow painter Fritz Melby. The artists first arrived at the port of La Guaira, staying there for three months before moving to a house close to the centre of the capital Caracas.

Early works such as the present, are the first demonstration of Pissarro’s interest in depicting every day life. In ‘Scène de Ville’ the town - likely Caracas - is a hive of activity. In the drawing Pissarro depicts the very necessary and domestic ritual of water collection. Some carry buckets on their heads and in their arms, others sit deep in conversation, all set against the impressive architecture of the city. There is a sense of closeness and rich community between the figures, as everybody goes about their day.

One characteristic of Pissarro’s early drawings is the use of diagonal cross hatchings, which Pissarro begins to implement in this present work. During this Venezuelan period Pissarro’s style develops greatly. This is clearly a time of learning and experimentation for the artist, topes in which he continues throughout his career. In ‘Scène de Ville’ he has clearly spent time watching and understanding the community he is depicting. Pissarro left Venezuela on 9 August 1854 and moved to Paris in 1855, taking a position as studio assistant to Anton Melby, Fritz’s older brother.

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. A companion piece to ‘Scène de Ville’ titled ‘Market Scene’ is now in the Olana Collection in Hudson, New York.