A place-name confined to two years

The record dates View of Paris from near Montmartre to 1886. Paris is named in nine titles in this catalogue — five dated 1886 and four dated 1887 — and in no title from any other year. Montmartre behaves the same way, appearing in ten titles all dated 1886 or 1887. The Paris period is the most sharply bounded stretch of the whole chronology, and the titles alone would date it.

What the record gives

The canvas measures 45.6 by 38.5 centimetres and is held by the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin, which holds one work in this catalogue. The measured palette reads as neutral.

Neutral peaks here

Neutral is the reading returned for twenty-six works out of 610, and 1886 carries seven of them — level with 1885 and more than any later year, which manages two in 1887 and one in 1889. A neutral reading means no single colour family dominates the catalogue image; it is not a statement that the picture is grey. As the decade proceeds, fewer and fewer surfaces come back undominated, and that is a measurable fact about the sequence rather than an interpretation of it.