The motif of the turning road which was one of the main subjects in C┼╜zanne's work until the middle of 1880, appeared at the beginning of the 1870s in landscapes of the Pontoise and Auvers-sur-Oise areas. A striking foreshortened ribbon of land leads the eye from the foreground deep into the background of the composition. Nature seems to echo the character of this muddy track: a grey threatening sky emphasises the dramatic atmosphere of the landscape; it is late autum, and the houses with their smokeless chimneys stand out cold and clear-cut against the air, heavy with storm clouds, whilst the bare trees punctuate the composition with their slender twisted silhouettes. This melancholic landscape with its fuliginous colours directly brings to mind some of Pissarro's works of the same period. That gloomy and heavy-hearted atmosphere remains an exception in C┼╜zanne's work.
