The life of Jacob Abraham Camille Pissarro stands out amongst Impressionists, his hardships a reflection of the tumultuous world he lived in. Born on the island of St. Thomas in 1830, Pissarro grew up alongside tropical rainforests and nesting sea turtles, the kind of landscape that one would imagine births a great artist. His time amidst the otherworldly beauty of St. Thomas was not without difficulty. Due to his parent’s unorthodox marriage, Pissarro spent his early years in exile of the island’s Jewish community, instead attending a segregated primary school. Here, Pissarro learned to read and write alongside the first generation of free Black children born on St. Thomas in almost 150 years. Later in life, Pissarro would stand out amongst European painters for his inclusion of people of color in his painted subjects. 

Moving to France from 1842 to 1846 to study at the Savary Academy, Pissarro would return to St. Thomas in his late adolescence, bringing with him a deep interest in the French Masters and a passion for capturing the gaiety of life. In the Caribbean, he focused his paintings on the daily lives of St. Thomas’ Black population, demonstrating the dignity the young artist saw in communities often left invisible to the art world. It’s theorized that Pissarro met the British painter James Gay Sawkins during his return to the island, as both painters depicted the people of St. Thomas through a similar lens of the beauty in daily life.  

Two Women Chatting by the Sea by Camille Pissarro, 1856

In 1851, Pissarro left his family clerk’s office and traveled to Venezuela, where he painted full-time with his close friend and fellow painter, Fritz Melbye. It was through Pissarro’s friendship with Melbye that he would later find work in Paris and move back to France in 1855. Upon his return, Pissarro studied at the Academie Suisse and Ecole des Beaux-Arts. However, the traditional styles taught at these institutions began to feel restraining to Pissarro, and he sought mentorship from individual artists whose styles refreshed him. Impressed by the sentimental tones of Jean Francois-Millet, Courbet, and Corot, Pissarro found a personal tutor in the latter. Corot introduced Pissarro to open-air painting, and during this time of growth, Pissarro focused on scenes of nature in the French countryside. Gradually, Pissarro’s ambitions strayed beyond the instructions of Corot, and the young artist experimented with painting scenes all in one sitting, without revision- an attempt to capture the “first impression” of a landscape. 

In 1859, Pissarro achieved his first display at the Paris Salon, the main marketplace for young artists at the time. In order to do this, Pissarro had to subscribe to traditional painting methods, which frustrated him and other students whom he’d befriended at the Academie Suisse. Claude Monet, Paul Cezanne, and Armand Guillaumin all found camaraderie in their exploratory painting styles and encouraged one another to defy standards and paint people in natural settings. By 1863, the group’s paintings were being routinely rejected from the Salon, and in rare moments when a piece was displayed, public hostility often ensued. No stranger to exile, Pissarro ignored critics and continued to use bright palettes amidst his cheerful depictions of life, producing paintings regardless of commissions. 

The Avenue, Sydenham by Camille Pissarro, 1871

The Franco-Prussian War of 1870 forced Pissarro into London, where his paintings were met with the same controversial reception as in Paris. His time in London was not fruitless, though, as Pissarro began experimenting with loosely blended brush strokes, a style that would later evolve into Pointillism. Upon returning to Paris in 1872, Pissarro found that over a thousand of his early paintings had been destroyed in the war, leaving a mere forty behind. In the face of this upset, Pissarro’s unrelenting will found strength to continue. He gathered with fellow painters Monet, Renoir, and Degas to express a need for a new family of painters. In 1873, Pissarro helped to establish a collective of fifteen artists who called themselves “Société Anonyme des Artistes.” Pissarro not only acted as the group’s first charter but was also pivotal in organizing the collective’s debut show in 1874, the first “Impressionist” art exhibit in history. 

Self-Portrait by Camille Pissarro, 1873

By 1880, Pissarro refocused his work on peasant life, depicting the working class in their common jobs, an act Renoir would later describe as “revolutionary.” Continuing his ever-adapting painting style, Pissarro began employing small brushstrokes of pure color with a refusal to blend the strokes, marking one of the earliest uses of pure Pointillism. Pissarro’s disregard for traditional standards gave the artist an eye ahead of his time. Upon seeing Vincent Van Gogh’s work in 1884, Pissarro would join the small handful of individuals who actually praised Van Gogh in the artist’s lifetime, a beautiful complement from one controversial painter to another. 

Apple Harvest by Camille Pissarro, 1888

From the 1890s until his passing in 1903, Pissarro painted with an exciting combination of Impressionistic and neo-Impressionistic styles, portraying street life with a slight flair of Pointillism that is not unlike the method utilized by Van Gogh in his famous self-portraits of 1887. During these years, Pissarro developed an eye condition that kept him from painting outdoors, so the artist began renting hotel rooms and setting up an easel near the window. For this reason, his later works are often from the bird’s eye view of a second or third-story room. 

La Place du Havre et la rue d’Amsterdam, Matin, Soleil by Camille Pissarro, 1893

Pissarro was the most notable Jewish Impressionist painter, and as tensions of anti-Semitism stirred throughout Europe, many of Pissarro’s lifelong peers succumbed to bigotry. In the last decade of his life, old friends and Impressionist legends such as Degas and Renoir refused to even greet the painter on the street.  After not attending his funeral in 1903, Degas wrote, “so he has died, the poor old wandering Jew.” Claude Monet, in a reflection of his empathetic character, remained a close friend to Pissarro through these times. In letters between the two, Pissarro expressed upsetting encounters with anti-Semitism in his daily life and in reviews of his artwork, though he never let such sentiments discourage him from painting.  

As the Nazi movement tore through Europe in the ’30s and ’40s, countless artworks by Pissarro, who had been a favorite amongst Jewish collectors, were stolen by the Reich. Lengthy legal battles ensued, and the rightful possession of many Pissarro paintings has been hotly contested well into the 21^st century. A recent instance was Leonie Meyer, who fought against the Fred Jones Jr Museum over the piece “Shepherdess Bringing Home the Sheep” (1886). In 2020, after Meyer’s legal endeavor was met with a heavy financial countersuit, the eighty-year-old holocaust survivor stated, “I have no other choice,” in giving up the painting. 

Pissarro’s most impressive auction price came in 2014, when his piece “Le Boulevard Montmartre, Matinee De Printemps” (1897), painted from a vantage point in the Grand Hotel de Russie, was sold at Sotheby’s London for £19,682,500. Before its record sale at Sotheby’s, the painting was stolen from victims of the Auschwitz concentration camp, Max and Johanna Silberberg. 

Le Boulevard de Montmartre, Matinée de Printemps by Camille Pissarro, 1897

Pissarro’s artworks, recognized as some of the earliest Impressionist paintings in existence, have passed down through history with no greater ease than the painter himself. Pissarro stood against bigotry with the same quiet dignity that he had learned in his childhood on St. Thomas. Here was a man who did not let the world break his spirit. From birth to death, Pissarro was a bold testament against the status quo of the art world- through a relentless drive for authenticity and experimentation, he trudged bravely through a world of critics. He was, in many ways, a heart for the Impressionist movement, giving others inspiration and companionship while defying the norms. His strength of character never sharpened his gentle spirit, and Pissarro remained a thoughtful companion and teacher over his lifetime, with painter Mary Cassette stating he “could have taught the stones to draw.” 

The memory of Pissarro is not only marked by the will of all Impressionist painters, but by Pissarro’s particular endurance through hardship. From a childhood in exile and decades in rejection to abandonment and physical ailment at the peak of his career, Pissarro refused to be hardened by circumstance. In his gentle manner and ambitious earnestness, it is impossible to say just how far Pissarro’s influence has reached. His outlook on life is best described through his own affirmation, “Blessed are they who see beautiful things in humble places where other people see nothing.”

About the author: Mary C. Kennelly is a Gen Z writer in Brooklyn, New York.  She writes short fiction and essays which aim to capture the complexities of the human experience. With a background in Environmental Science, her work is heavily influenced by themes of resilience and community.

Citations: 

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Berson, R. (1996). The New Painting: Impressionism 1874-1886: Documentation. Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. ISBN 0-295-96704-8. (https://archive.org/details/ newpaintingimpre0000unse/page/n315/mode/2up)

Camille Pissarro. (n.d.). Camille Pissarro. Artnet.com. (https://www.artnet.com/artists/ camille-pissarro/biography)

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Dunlop, I. (1972). The Shock of the New: Seven Historic Exhibitions of Modern Art. New York: American Heritage Press. 

Gordon, S. (2014, January 14). Sotheby’s to auction restituted Pissarro’s “Boulevard  Montmartre.” Center for Art Law.  

Hamilton, G. (1976). Pissarro, Camille. Collier's Encyclopedia. Halsey, William D. (ed.). Vol. 19. p. 83. 

Murphy, J. (2015, September 14). The Marriage of Opposites: Who Was Rachel Pissarro. Internet Archive.

Parsons, M. (2014, January 18). Art looted by Nazis continues to surface at auction. The Irish Times.

U.S. Department of the Interior. (2022, August 24). African diaspora. National Parks Service.