PISSARRO, CAMILLE

PISSARRO, CAMILLE (1830–1903), French painter. Born into a Sephardi family which had migrated from Bordeaux to the Virgin Islands, he was sent to a boarding school in Paris at the age of 12. At 17 he returned to St. Thomas to become a clerk in his father's general store, but he wanted to be an artist, and ran away to Caracas, Venezuela. After a while he obtained his father's permission to study in France, and from 1855 until his death, he remained in, or near, Paris. With his socialist-anarchist convictions, he regarded himself a citizen of the world, with no particular religious, racial, or national ties. His wife was of Catholic peasant stock. He was shocked and hurt by the dreyfus case, but more as a man of progressive political ideals than as a Jew. Pissarro became a staunch member of a loosely organized group that came into being in 1874 under the name of "Société anonyme des artistes, peintres, sculpteurs, et graveurs" which soon became better known as the "Impressionists." He participated in   all of the Impressionists' eight group shows, received his share of abuse from public and press, and held the group together until 1886, after Cézanne, Renoir, and even the prime mover, Monet, had lost interest. He took his guidance from Corot and Courbet, blending Corot's subtlety of atmospheric effect with the strength and solidity of Courbet. In 1865 he came under the spell of Manet. By that time he had already eliminated black and the siennas and ochers from his palette. In his mid-fifties, he was greatly influenced by Georges Seurat's pointillist technique, and for several years he experimented with the "divisionist" method of painting with little dots of primary color. Yet, he is chiefly known for his Impressionist landscapes and cityscapes. Pissarro thought he saw nature objectively but actually he rendered it just as much from feeling and knowledge as from dispassionate sight – rendered it in solidly constructed, architectural forms. Most of his canvases show a definite desire for order and organization, and a feeling for design. His work is uneven – perhaps more uneven than that of other artists, since he was forced to overproduce in his efforts to keep his family of eight from starvation. All of Pissarro's sons – Lucien (1863–1944), Georges (1871–1961), Félix (1874–1897), Ludovic-Rudolpe (1878–1952), and Paul-Emile (1884–1972) – were gifted artists, but only one, LUCIEN PISSARRO, achieved a modicum of fame for his Impressionist landscapes and his woodcuts. Lucien played a major part in the introduction of Impressionist painting to England. Educated in France, he was trained by his father and in 1890 went to England, where he met William Morris, Charles Ricketts, and Charles Shannon who interested him in the art of book design. He later set up his own publishing firm, the Eragny Press, and collaborated with his wife in the production of beautifully illustrated books. Among his book productions was The Book of Ruth and Esther. Lucien's daughter Orovida (1893–1968) inherited his talent. She signed her work with her first name, and became known for her studies of animals. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: J. Rewald, Pissarro (Eng., 1963); idem (ed.), Camille Pissarro: Letters to his Son Lucien (1943); A. Werner, Pissarro (Eng., 1963); W.S. Meadmore, Lucien Pissarro (Eng., 1962). ADD. BIBLIOGRAPHY: T. Maloon, Camille Piscarro (2006). (Alfred Werner)