One for the road: Camille Pissarro's The Avenue, Sydenham

The sunlight of Britain in the first days of spring, a light that is still cooled by winter and terribly reserved, not yet ready to take its coat off, is seen acutely by French eyes in 1871. Pissarro brings his feel for the immediate impression to a Victorian suburb, rendering posts as streaks of yellow-white, a grass verge as green and lemon, and trees that are getting their first new leaves as brown webs in the crisp air. It is almost painfully perfect as a picture of the timid first stirrings of rebirth Illustration: National Gallery