Camille Pissarro

Camille Pissarro was a French Impressionist artist who was born on July 10, 1830 in Charlotte Amalie, US Virgin Islands. Pissarro was the third son of a French Jewish merchant of Portuguese descent, Abraham Gabriel Pissarro, and Rachel Manzana-Pomie, a woman from the Dominican Republic. He would spend his early life on the Virgin Islands and was part of the island’s small Jewish community until he was 12, where he would return to Paris. He attended a boarding school where he started to have an interest in drawing and would occasionally visit the Louvre. He would stay at the boarding school for six years and then he returned to the islands to help his father. However, Pissarro had no interest in helping the family business and preferred to sketch instead of working at the harbour. He met a Danish artist Fritz Melbye and Pissarro decided to go along with him to Venezuela in November 1852. There, he produced some photo-realistic paintings. He returned to Paris again in 1855 where he attended various art schools such as École des Beaux-Arts and Académie Suisse, and was taught under a number of great master such as Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Gustave Courbet, and Charles-Francois Daubigny. Corot became an important influence to Pissarro and Corot considers him as one of his pupils. His time at school would also led to Pissarro to meet with future Impressionist artist such as Claude Monet and Cezanne. He would travel around rural areas in France to paint landscapes but stay within close proximity with other Impressionist artists, and as time went on, he started to go against the teachings of his school. He would be seen as a fatherly figure among young artists and a fierce supporter for egalitarianism which impressed everyone around him. His life in art would be interrupted in 1870 when the Franco-Prussian war began. He would flee to London to do paintings and art deals until he returned to France only to find his studio destroyed by the war. In 1872, he moved to Pontoise where he gathered a small circle of artists including Cezanne and Degas, where he would teach them about art. His group would do exhibitions but was financially struggling and the works were criticized by the public. Despite this criticism, he continued to do exhibitions as he believed it was the right path forward for him and his group. He ended his exhibitions in 1886 due to economic difficulties and from then on, he changed his style from doing Impressionistic work to do other styles after seeing younger artists’ work. Pissarro would marry Julie Vellay and would have a son named Lucien who would also become an artist. Pissarro died on November 13, 1903. Pissarro first did realism paintings and because of his time in Venezuela, the tropical nature would influence his use of light on colour, a key part of his Impressionism artworks. His Impressionist works would use paint that would be applied thickly and used a technique called optical colour mixing where the contrasting colours would make the painting look out of focus when seen close up but when looked from a distance, looks realistic. His paintings would include labourers or peasants in fields which showcased Pissarro’s anarcho-socialist views. He would also paint cityscapes and occasionally portraits. When he worked with younger painters, he would experiment with colour harmony and dashed brushstrokes which allowed more vibrancy in his compositions, and made his figures look more harmonious. Some of his famous works include The Boulevard Montmartre on a Winter Morning(1897), The garden of Pontoise(1877), Le grand noyer à l’Hermitage(1875), Hay Harvest at Eragny(1901), and so on. I enjoyed looking at Pissarro’s work. I think he finds a perfect way to combine realism and impressionism together by making his paintings look out of focus and using noticeable strokes, but still making the figures and scenery look realistic. His usage of colour makes his paintings have a calm and somber feel to the scenery and it makes you feel like you’re in the painting somehow and understand the emotions of everyday citizens during that time period. His style is very unique and I would like to know more about how he is able to create an impressionistic look while also adding detail to scenery.