Pissarro, Camille

(1831-1903)

Pissarro, Camille (1831-1903) Born in St. Thomas in the West Indies, the son
of a Creole mother and a father of Portuguese-Jewish descent, Pissarro worked
as a clerk in his father's general store. Then, in 1852, he ran away to
Venezuela with a Danish painter, after which his reluctant parents resigned
themselves to his becoming an artist. In France he worked on landscapes painted
entirely in the open, but he could sell almost nothing and he and his family
lived in poverty. In 1870 he fled before the German invasion, where eventually
news reached him that his house had been used as a butchery by the invaders,
and his store of 200-300 pictures had become duckboards in the muddy garden. In
1872 he took part in the first Impressionist exhibition. From 1895 severe eye
trouble forced him to give up working outdoors, and he painted many town views
from the windows of Paris. His production was enormous and in all techniques --
chiefly oil painting, but also pastel, gouache, drawing in all media, etching,
and lithography.

Copyright© 1995 ZCI Publishing Inc.