Eugène Cuvelier grew up in Arras, near the Forest of Fontainebleau, where he became friends with many artists of the Barbizon school, the most inventive landscape painters of the day. For his poetic interpretation of a foggy lane in Arras Eugène Cuvelier relied on a paper negative, a material that had long before been superceded by the glass negative in photographic practice. The fibers of the paper muffled excessive detail, resulting in a soft rendering of the misty village byway that is reminiscent of contemporary works by the Barbizon painter Camille Corot. In his attention to the play of light and atmosphere, Cuvelier touched on ideas that would later become the major themes of Impressionism.

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