Camille Pissarro (1830-1903)
Camille was born in St. Thomas in the West Indies, where his father was a prosperous merchant. He was educated at Paris and returned to St. Thomas after his education but was not interested in the family business. He spent his time learning how to paint and sketch. Later, he worked with Danish painter Fritz Melbye in Venezuela.
He worked under Corot at the Academy Suisse where he met Manet, Monet and probably Courbet and Cezanne. This experience was a major influence in his style of painting. Corot helped him improve his lighting and coloring techniques. In 1855, he moved to France. He began sketching landscapes in small towns and villiages near Paris. His early works were praised by critics but he still remained rather unsuccessful and was forced to earn a living painting shades and fans.
Pissarro subsequently joined the impressionists.From the late 1860s he was a major figure of what was soon to become the Impressionist circle.
He was still developing his technique and during the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871), he lived in England and studied English art, particularly the landscapes of Joseph Mallord William Turner. For a time in the 1880s Pissarro, discouraged with his work, experimented with pointillism the new style, however, proved unpopular with collectors and dealers, and he returned to what he found to be a freer impressionist style.
In France, he exhibited at the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874 and subsequently exhibited at all 8 Impressionist exhibitions (1874-86) which he largely organized. Despite great poverty he refused to seek Salon recognition.
In the 1880s, Pissarro joined a younger generation of artists, including Georges Seurat, Paul Signac, and his own son Lucien, in adopting the Neo-Impressionist technique, which used the claims of science to support a new style of painting. He later abondoned this technique and returned to his roots. He then began to paint city scenes that depicted life in Paris.
Pissarro continued to paint until his death in 1903.
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