Camille Pissarro

Camille Pissarro was one of the founding members of the French Impressionist movement, not only as an artist but also as a teacher a younger generation of artists. Beginning in 1874, he was the only artist to participate in all eight Impressionist exhibitions. Born in St. Thomas in the Danish West Indies, Camille was sent to school in Paris at the age of 11 where he displayed a talent for drawing. In 1855, having convinced his parents of his determination to pursue a career as an artist rather than work in the family import/export business, he returned to Paris where he studied at the Academie Suisse alongside Claude Monet.

At the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war in 1870, Camille moved to England. With Monet he painted a series of landscapes around South-East London as well as studying English landscape painters in the museums. In 1872 Camille settled in Pontoise where he remained for the next ten years, gathering a close circle of friends around him. Gauguin was among the many artists to visit him there and Cézanne, who lived nearby, came for long periods to work and learn. These were also the years of the Impressionist group exhibitions in which Camille played a major role, but which earned him much criticism for his art. While mainly interested in landscape, he introduced figures (generally peasants conducting their rural occupations) and animals into his work and these became the focal point of the composition. It was this unsentimental and unliterary approach, and the complete absence of any pretence, that seemed to stop his work from finding appreciation with the general public.

In the last years of his life Camille divided his time between Paris, Rouen, Le Havre and his home in Eragny and painted many series of different aspects of those cities, with varying light and weather effects. Many of these paintings are considered amongst his best and make a fitting finale to his long and eventful career.

When Camille Pissarro died in the autumn of 1903 he had finally started to gain public recognition and today, of course, his work can be found in many of the most important museums and private collections throughout the world.

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