In his views of the countryside, towns, and villages surrounding Paris, Armand Charnay portrayed the daily activities of local inhabitants. Here, worshipers depart from a church, huddling together against the cool, spring rain. Their colorful umbrellas, cosmopolitan commodities, seem out of place beside the centuries-old medieval church the crowd is leaving. Contrasting the scenery of ancient France with the look of the region’s then-current inhabitants is a recurring strategy Charnay used to capture an ephemeral sense of modernity. Compositions such as this one also reflect the artist’s keen interest in nature’s atmospheric effects , seen here in the dense gray clouds reflected in the wet landscape.