- Person
- Camille Pissarro
- Lived
- 1830–1903
- Field
- Impressionist painting
- From
- Danish-French
The story
In the 1860s and early 1870s the official Paris Salon was essentially the only marketplace where young artists could show their work, and its juries favoured religious, historical and mythological subjects painted in a polished studio manner. They repeatedly rejected the fresh, outdoor painting of Camille Pissarro and his friends, which showed ordinary roads, fields and working people. In 1863 so many artists were refused that Emperor Napoleon III ordered a separate Salon des Refusés, which drew hostility from officials and the public alike.
Pissarro, born in 1830 into a Jewish family on Saint Thomas in the Danish West Indies, was older than most of the group, and his egalitarian beliefs made him deeply committed to fairness among artists. After returning from London at the end of the Franco-Prussian War, he told his friends that they needed an alternative to the Salon where each could show his or her own style.
In 1873 he helped establish the Société Anonyme des Artistes, Peintres, Sculpteurs et Graveurs, a cooperative of fifteen artists that included Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Berthe Morisot. Pissarro drafted the group's first charter and became the pivotal figure in establishing it and holding it together. With his prematurely grey beard, the 43-year-old was regarded as a wise elder and father figure, yet he worked with the others as an equal.
The society's first exhibition opened in Paris in April 1874. Pissarro showed five landscapes. Most critics were horrified by the sketchy brushwork and commonplace subjects, and one, mocking Monet's painting Impression, Sunrise, gave the group its lasting name. Pissarro remained the most loyal member, the only artist to show at all eight Impressionist exhibitions through 1886, and the art historian Diane Kelder judged that no one did more to settle the disputes that threatened to break the group apart.
The Impressionists' decision to organise their own shows, outside official control, became a model that independent artists' groups around the world have followed ever since. It showed that painters could present their work directly to the public, on their own terms.
Why it matters
Pissarro's organising work helped artists break the Salon's monopoly and showed that painters could present their own work on their own terms.
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 began again after losing 1,500 paintingsWhen Camille Pissarro returned from England after the Franco-Prussian War, only about 40 of the 1,500 paintings he had left behind survived. He started again.
- 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'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
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