I like this painting; it is a sunny day. Perhaps it is later morning as the woman walking up the street is without a coat. There is some horse and carriage traffic. Notice how Pissarro has painted the wheel so we can sense its motion. We can feel the quivering of the tree.
The stone sidewalk on the left has been torn up ahead. The lady with the market basket will have to walk around the construction. In the 19th century there were no plastic orange cones.
This is a dirt road - no cement, no asphalt, not even cobble stone - just hard packed earth from all the plodding of horses, carriages and human feet. Roads like this turned to mud in the spring thaw, but as soon as the summer set in, they would become hard-packed like stone.
Jesus said, "You must do better than the pharisees who are actors - good at keeping everyone else in line with lots of laws and observances." Oh my, there are lots of Christians who think this is their mission, keeping everyone else in line. They can be hard to bear and give religion a bad name.
Full of passions, we need to take ourselves in hand. Softening our own Pharisee-hearts which can be hardened like this Pontoise road - packed down hard with malice, callousness, coldness, mean-spirited judgments and petty assessments.
Standing before this painting, I realize the well-traveled Pontoise road is an image of my heart. I acknowledge every bit of it and then: "Jesus mercy, Mary help!"
