Café à Saint-Cloud Pencil drawing, located with pen inscription in lower right “Café à St. Cloud” and stamp impressed post-mortem by the Vente Corot, (the sale of the artworks after the master's death). Dated around 1855, it was most probably painted a few years later, around 1860 - 1862, years in which Corot often went to the woods of the small village of Saint Cloud, where he liked to spend his time painting the allées (paths) and landscapes of what would later become one of the most beautiful parks in France, located a short distance from the outskirts of Boulogne-Billancourt. Probably during a restful stop on one of these frequent trips, of which we are left with some splendid paintings, such as “Une Allée à Saint Cloud” in a private collection and “A path in Saint-Cloud” now in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, painted in 1862, Corot fixed in his notebook the impression of this (still deserted) café, which must have struck him greatly, to the point of capturing it with a drawing that brings us back to his vision, crepuscular and serene, of a dying world, pressed by the nascent industrialization of the late 19th century.