In Ville d'Avray, Corot's palette is restrained, dominated with browns and blacks ("forbidden colors" among the Impressionists). Like similar Barbizon scenes, this painting has a moody quality, characterized by a contemplative lyricism, a lone boatman with his peasant cottage looming nearby against a backdrop of dwellings on the other bank that peaks our curiosity as to the inhabitants and diversity of lifestyles on each side of the river. Corot painted this landscape of Ville d'Avray, a village south of Paris where his father had an estate, from the edge of its ponds.