Camille Pissarro (1830-1903)

French painter Camille Pissarro was one of the major members of the French Impressionism movement and his contribution to fine art painting helped establish the Post-Impressionist era. Always an anarchist and always poor, he was influenced by the painters Gustave Courbet, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot and Charles-François Daubigny. He painted a wide variety of subjects across most of the painting genres, including cityscapes, still lifes, portraits, landscapes and peasant scenes. His key works include View from Louveciennes, 1869 (National Gallery, London); Autumn, 1870 (J Paul Getty Museum, LA) and The Climbing Path, L'Hermitage Pontoise, 1875 (Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York).

The Woodcutter, The Robert Homes
a Court Collection, Perth (1879).

Pissarro was born to Jewish parents in the West Indies where he lived until being sent to boarding school in France to complete his education. After completing his education, he returned to work in his parent's store. But at the age of 22 he abandoned his comfortable existence to travel to South America with a Danish artist, Fritz Melbye. Three years later he moved to Paris and studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and Academie Suisse, where he studied under Corot and Courbet. Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, a member of the French Barbizon school, in particular is seen as his most important early influence. Pissarro painted mainly dark landscapes in his early years, for example: Chennevieres au bord de la Marne, 1864 (National Gallery of Scotland); Bord de la Marne en Hiver, 1866 (Art Institute of Chicago) and L'Hermitage a Pontoise, 1867 (Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne). While his paintings were accepted for show at the Salon throughout the 1860s, he also participated in the famous Salon des Refusés, along with Edouard Manet and James Abbott McNeill Whistler.

The Climbing Path, L'Hermitage,
Pontoise,Brooklyn Museum of Art,
New York (1875).

IMPRESSIONIST ARTISTS
For list, see Impressionist Painters.

At the end of the 1860s he moved to Louveciennes, which was 20 miles outside Paris. Here, he worked closed with Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley and Pierre Auguste Renoir. His palette lightened and he began to paint in the impressionist style, using smaller brushstrokes of vivid colour. With the advent of the Franco-Prussian war, this artistic commune devoted to Impressionist landscape painting broke up and Pissarro fled to London where he made the acquaintance of Paul Durand-Ruel, a Parisian art dealer who would become one of his most ardent supporters. His exhibited in the Salon for the last time in 1870.

On his return to France Pissarro settled in Pontoise, where he was visited by young artists looking for inspiration and advice, including Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Cezanne. He took part in the first Impressionist exhibition of 1874. He was the only Impressionist, along with Edgar Degas, to exhibit at all eight of the Impressionist exhibitions, before the group disbanded in 1886.

Boulevard Monmartre, Rainy Weather,
Afternoon (1897) by Camille Pissaro.

POST-IMPRESSIONISTS
See: Post-Impressionist Painters.

Pissarro always doubted his own artistic ability and he never fully settled into a style with which he was entirely comfortable. He progressed from dark landscapes, to brighter Impressionism, toyed briefly with Neo-Impressionism (after meeting Georges Seurat) and then returned to Impressionism. He often chose high view points, painting a city landscape for example from a top window. His palette developed a chalky, pale tone, and he favoured green and blue hues. Important later pictures include: Self-Portrait, 1873 (Musee d'Orsay, Paris); The Woodcutter, 1879 (The Robert Homes a Court Collection, Perth); The Washerwoman, 1880 (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York); Young Peasant Girl Wearing a Hat, 1881 (The National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC); The Shepherdess, 1881 (Musee d'Orsay); Boulevard Montmartre at Night, 1897 (National Gallery, London); The Church of St. Jacques at Dieppe, 1901 (Musee d'Orsay); The Red Roofs (Musee d'Orsay) and The Train, Bedford Park (Private collection).

In 1893, Durand-Ruel organised a major exhibition of 46 of Pissarro's works, but art critics were not impressed. Pissarro continued to work in his studio, until his death in 1903 and lived long enough to witness the start of the Impressionists fame and influence on the world. By now one of the most famous artists of the fin de siecle, Pissarro was revered by the Post-Impressionists, in particular by Cezanne and Gauguin.

However, his overall contribution to the history of art continued to be under-estimated for some time. Where Monet was a prolific practitioner of the Impressionist style, Pissarro was a key instigator of the Impressionist technique. Also, not only had he contributed significantly to Impressionist theory, but he managed to stay on friendly terms with difficult personalities like Degas, Cezanne and Gaugin.

He was survived by one daugher, Jeanne Pissarro, and through her a generation of other artists would be born. Lelia Pissarro, Henri Bonin-Pissarro (also known as BOPI) and Claude Bonin-Pissarro. Although Pissarro never sold his paintings for much during his lifetime, today they fetch millions of dollars in art auctions. His works can be seen in the best art museums around the world.

• For information about contemporary artists in Ireland, see: Irish Art Encyclopedia.