Jacob Abraham Camille Pissarro

Background

He was born at Charlotte Amalie (St. Thomas), Virgin Islands, July 10, 1830. His father, a merchant, was a Frenchman of Jewish descent, his mother partly Creole.

Education

Pissarro studied from great forerunners, including Gustave Courbet and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot. He later studied and worked alongside Georges Seurat and Paul Signac when he took on the Neo-Impressionist style at the age of 54.

Career

After a brief experience in business, he went to France in 1855 to become a painter. By 1870 he was painting landscapes with the scrupulous regard for the appearance of objects in light and atmosphere which came to be called "Impressionist. " Unlike Claude Monet, he did not restrict himself to landscape but painted many scenes of peasant life around Pontoise, where he lived from 1872 to 1882, and later at Eragny-Bazincourt. Although he was accused of imitating J. F. Millet, his work is more truly naturalistic in contrast to the Romantic realism of the Barbizon master. After 1885 Pissarro worked for a time in the divisionist manner of Georges Seurat and Paul Signac, but by 1890 he had returned to his own personal technique. In his last years, although handicapped by failing eyesight, he executed a series of Parisian scenes which are among the most successful Impressionist revelations of light and atmosphere. His numerous drawings and etchings are unique in Impressionism and illustrate the fundamentally structural character of his design.

Achievements

• During the period Pissarro exhibited his works, art critic Armand Silvestre had called Pissarro the "most real and most naive member" of the Impressionist group. His work has also been described by art historian Diane Kelder as expressing "the same quiet dignity, sincerity, and durability that distinguished his person. " She adds that "no member of the group did more to mediate the internecine disputes that threatened at times to break it apart, and no one was a more diligent proselytizer of the new painting.
  
  Caribbean author and scholar Derek Walcott based his book-length poem, Tiepolo's Hound (2000), on Pissarro's life

Personality

Quotes from others about the person

• The American impressionist Mary Cassatt, who at one point lived in Paris to study art, and joined his Impressionist group, noted that he was "such a teacher that he could have taught the stones to draw correctly. "

Connections

He started a relationship with the maid of his mother, Julie Vellay. The couple had their first son Lucien in 1863 and in 1871 they got married in London. The couple had eight children of whom one died at birth. All his children were painters of whom Lucien, Georges Henri Manzana and Félix were Impressionist and Neo-impressionist painters. Orovida Pissarro, his grand-daughter from Lucien was also a painter. Many of his descendents through his daughter Jeanne Pissarro were artists including Henri Bonin-Pissarro, Claude Bonin-Pissarro and Frédéric Bonin-Pissarro. Joachim Pissarro, his great-grandson is a historian of art and served the ‘Museum of Modern Art’ in New York City as a curator of sculpture and painting. Joachim is at present a professor at the Art Department of the ‘Hunter College’.

great-grandson :

Joachim Pissarro

He was a Head Curator of Drawing and Painting at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and a professor in Hunter College's Art Department.

Wife:

Julie Vellay

She was the daughter of a vineyard grower.

great-grandaughter:

Lélia Pissarro

She is a contemporary French artist and gallery owner who lives and works in London.

granddaughter :

Orovida Camille Pissarro

She was a British painter and etcher.

Daughter:

Jeanne Pissarro

She was the only daughter of Camille.

Son:

Georges Henri Manzana Pissarro

He was a French artist, who worked in Impressionist and Post-Impressionist styles.

Son:

Félix Pissarro

He, in the year of the first Impressionist exhibition, was a nineteenth-century French painter, etcher and caricaturist.

Son:

Lucien Pissarro

He was a landscape painter, printmaker, wood engraver and designer and printer of fine books.

Grandson:

Henri Bonin-Pissarro

He was born in 1918 and died in 2003.

Grandson:

Claude Bonin-Pissarro

He is a French painter and graphic designer.

References

• Camille Pissarro
• Camille Pissarro: Impressions of City and Country