The picture shows a road in Argenteuil, a small picturesque town on the outskirts of Paris, where Manet, Monet, Sisley and other French Impressionists worked later. Unlike the artists of the 1870s and 1880s, who preferred to work in strong sunlight, Corot chose to record Argenteuil in dull, rainy weather. The motif of a road receding into the distance with a bell tower completing the perspective is often found in Corot's landscapes of the mid-1860s.