Camille Pissarro:His Works

Red Roofs

Although Pissarro experimented with different styles, his masterpieces are purely Impressionistic. 'The Red Roofs' is one such work. The use of color and lighting produces a unique effect. It is different from some of his other works during the same period such as 'Orchard at Pontoise' because instead of stressing on low tones, he has chosen to express the brilliance of light. He once told an aspiring young painter,Louis Le Bail : `Do not define too closely the outlines of things; it is the brushstroke of the right value and color which should produce the drawing. Don't work bit by bit but paint everything at once by placing tones everywhere with brushstrokes of the right color and value...' His works clearly reflect this aim to blend color and form.

One of Pissarro's important pieces is 'The Pont Neuf: A Winter Morning'. He painted it during his latter days and in a way, it's style is a contemporary tribute to that of the original Impressionists. It depicts a winter sunrise as the city is touched by the rays of the emerging sun.

Pissarro was devoted to Impressionism but the influence of external styles with which he experimented is evident even in his Impressionist works. It is difficult to classify his style into any distict chronological categories, but furthermore, his style often varies even within the same painting: his brushwork techniques, together with his compositional devices, seldom follow a single formulaic pattern within any given work. A comparison of two paintings as different and as far apart chronologically as Upper Norwood, Crystal Palace London of 1870, and The Siesta, Eragny, done nearly thirty years later, indicates clearly the extent to which these two works radically differ from each other technically, chromatically, and compositionally. More intriguing is that each work in itself displays at least four or five juxtaposed and distinct techniques.

Pissarro once spoke of the distinctions between what he called 'literary painting' and 'a painter's painting'. To him,the aim of a 'literary painting' was to depict a historical or social motif,to tell a story and he considered these works to lack a true artistic quality. Louis Welden Hawkins is his example of one such painter.

His works showed a profound visual and artistic mind, the ability to display the poetic beauty of his subject that undoubtedly arose from his passion for art.

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