- Person
- Camille Pissarro
- Lived
- 1830–1903
- Field
- Impressionist painting
- From
- Danish-French
The story
By 1870 Camille Pissarro, born into a Jewish family on the Caribbean island of Saint Thomas, had spent fifteen years in France learning to paint landscapes directly from nature. He was beginning to make a name for himself; Émile Zola had called him one of the few true painters of the day. He was living with his partner Julie Vellay and their young children at Louveciennes, near Paris.
When the Franco-Prussian War broke out that summer, Pissarro, who held only Danish nationality and could not join the French army, fled with his family to Upper Norwood, then a village on the edge of London. In the haste of departure he left behind most of the work of the previous twenty years.
Prussian soldiers occupied the house. When Pissarro returned in 1871, he found that of some 1,500 paintings left there, only about 40 remained. The rest had been damaged or destroyed, many reportedly laid down as mats in the muddy garden so the soldiers could keep their boots clean. It was one of the greatest losses suffered by any artist of the period. Historians assume that many of the lost canvases showed the new style he was then developing, so the loss erased much of the record of Impressionism's birth, and his early development can now be traced only through a handful of surviving works.
Pissarro, then forty, did not give up. He settled at Pontoise, where he lived from 1872 to 1884, and painted with renewed energy, often working alongside Paul Cézanne, who walked miles to join him at his motifs. Within two years he had helped found the artists' cooperative whose 1874 exhibition launched Impressionism, and he went on to show at all eight Impressionist exhibitions.
Over the following three decades he produced a vast new body of work: village scenes, harvests and orchards at Pontoise and Éragny, experiments with the dotted technique of Neo-Impressionism, a large body of prints, and the great city series of Paris, Rouen and Le Havre painted in his last years. During his lifetime he sold relatively few paintings, but today his works hang in major museums around the world and sell for millions.
Why it matters
Pissarro's determination to start over after losing nearly all his early work gave the world the great Impressionist paintings of his later career.
About Camille Pissarro
Caribbean-born Jewish painter, the ‘dean’ of Impressionism, the only artist in all eight Impressionist exhibitions and a mentor to Cézanne, Gauguin and others.
More about Camille Pissarro
- Camille Pissarro painted Paris from his windowUnable to paint outdoors because of an eye infection, Camille Pissarro painted from hotel windows, creating his celebrated 1897 views of the Boulevard Montmartre.
- Camille Pissarro drafted the Impressionists' charterIn 1873 Camille Pissarro helped create the artists' cooperative whose 1874 show launched Impressionism, and he drafted the group's first charter.
- Camille Pissarro's letters to his son became an art classicCamille Pissarro's letters to his son Lucien, published in English in 1943, remain a key source on how the Impressionists thought and worked.
- In London Pissarro studied Constable and TurnerAs a refugee in London in 1870–71, Camille Pissarro painted the city's suburbs, studied Constable and Turner with Monet, and met the dealer Paul Durand-Ruel.
- Camille Pissarro was a pioneering Impressionist printmakerCamille Pissarro experimented with etching, lithography, woodcut and monotype, becoming one of the most dedicated printmakers among the Impressionists.
- Camille Pissarro stood up for Alfred DreyfusCamille Pissarro was convinced of Alfred Dreyfus's innocence by 1897 and in 1898 added his name to the intellectuals' petition backing Émile Zola.
Sources
- Camille Pissarro Wikipedia
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.