Chance Encounters, Edition 63
Camille Pissarro; Painting Is My Life
Camille Pissarro (Danish-French, 1830-1903), a founder of the Impressionist movement, devoted fifty years to rendering his perceptions of the world in paintings, drawings, and prints. In addition to his fierce commitment to his own work, Pissarro was a faithful comrade to his fellow artists, encouraging his contemporaries and teaching younger artists, including greats like Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, and Vincent van Gogh. Throughout his career, the artist experimented with new ideas, from his involvement in the beginnings of Impressionism to his engagement with the techniques and philosophy of the Neo-Impressionists Georges Seurat and Paul Signac.
I began to understand my sensations, to know what I wanted, at around the age of forty - but only vaguely. At fifty, that is in 1880, I formulated the idea of unity, without being able to render it. At sixty, I am beginning to see the possibility of rendering it. – Camille Pissarro
Jacon Abraham Camille Pissarro was born to Danish-Portuguese Jewish parents on the island of St. Thomas, in what was then the Dutch West Indies and is now one of the U.S. Virgin Islands. As a teen, Pissarro worked for a time in the family hardware business as a clerk, but he spent much of his leisure time sketching boats in the harbor. The young man soon met local artists who encouraged him to expand his artistic horizons.
In 1855, Pissarro moved to Paris where he became a studio assistant to a painter of seascapes. Pissarro also took classes at the Academy of Fine Arts and copied works in the Louvre Museum, following the established path for a young artist in mid-19th century Paris. Like others at the time, he found the conservative teachings of the Academy limiting and looked to the painters of the Barbizon School, slightly older artists who advocated naturalistic landscape subjects. Pissarro’s 1856 painting A Creek in Saint Thomas (Virgin Islands) combines influences from the Barbizon painters, as well as the Romantic painters of the early 19th century, especially in the shimmering pearlescent sky and water and the exotic palm trees.
For his teacher, Pissarro sought out Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (French, 1796-1875) whom he admired for his truthfulness to nature. Corot encouraged Pissarro to paint en plein air (outdoors). Pissarro began to have some success, including acceptance at The Salon, the annual juried exhibition which could make or break a young artist’s career. Pissarro first had a work accepted in 1859, the same year in which he became friends with Claude Monet, Armand Guillaumin, and Cézanne. This group provided the artist with companionship and the support of others struggling with new approaches, especially a preference for plein air painting.
He was a father for me. A man to consult and a little like the good Lord. – Paul Cézanne (French, 1839-1906)
Pissarro continued to have works accepted by The Salon’s juries in the 1860s, including Jalais Hill, Pontoise, for the Salon of 1868. The deep greens and soft browns of this painting are reminiscent of Barbizon School works, but unlike his teacher Corot, Pissarro preferred not to alter his works in the studio, choosing to preserve his first impression. As a result, his works were often criticized as vulgar and as a hodgepodge of random brushstrokes, but others admired what the artist was doing. French author and critic Émile Zola (1840-1902), described Jalais Hill as a “rare poem of life and strength” and described Pissarro as “one of three or four true painters of this period.”
Paint generously and unhesitatingly, for it is best not to lose the first impression. – Camille Pissarro
With the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, Pissarro relocated to London where the artist painted The Avenue, Sydenham (above) and other works in which he continued to work on capturing the first sensations that he experienced as he painted on site. The bright sunlight minimizes shadows in the calm suburban scene but Pissarro added a sense of movement with a string of puffy clouds and walking figures and carriage. The work is mostly made up of patches of color like Jalais Hill, but there are hints of the Impressionist technique of unblended color in the foreground and along the horizon.
Returning to France after the war, Pissarro re-established his contacts with the Impressionist group, telling them he wished to form an alternative to The Salon. This led to the formation in 1873 of the Société Anonyme des Artistes, Peintres, Sculpteurs et Graveurs (Collaborative Society of Artists, Painters, Sculptors, and Printmakers), for which Pissarro wrote the original charter. This is the group that held the eight Impressionist exhibitions from 1874 to 1886; Pissarro was the only artist to participate in every one and he is often credited with being the glue that kept the group together through personality conflicts, philosophical debates, and heated disagreements. Pissarro’s calm temperament and fatherly demeanor led his colleagues to respond to his efforts while his uncompromising commitment to his art and desire to improve earned Pissarro the respect of all.
Cover the canvas at the first go, then work at it until you see nothing more to add. Don’t be afraid in nature: one must be bold, at the risk of having been deceived and making mistakes. God takes care of imbeciles, little children and artists. – Camille Pissarro, in a letter to his artist son, Lucien (1863-1944)
Around 1878, Pissarro painted this clever work demonstrating the Impressionist artistic philosophy. Beginning with an artist’s palette, he applied large spots of unblended color, beginning with white in the upper right, then yellow, red, and violet across the top, with a final patch of blue on the left side. From only these five colors, the artist represented a naturalistic scene depicting one his favorite themes, rural agricultural laborers. He conveys the fall of light and shadow, the fluffy clouds in the sky, and the variety of greenery without any black or traditional blending. Though clearly intended as a novelty demonstration piece, this work shows the confidence and enthusiasm with which Pissarro was painting in the late 1870s.
Painting, art in general, enchants me. It is my life. What else matters? When you put all your soul into a work, all that is noble in you, you cannot fail to find a kindred soul who understands you, and you do not need a host of such spirits. Is not that all an artist should wish for? – Camille Pissarro, in a letter to his son, Lucien
In the 1880s, Pissarro felt dissatisfied, describing himself as stuck in artistic “mire.” He returned to his early interest in depicting the lives of ordinary people, especially rural farmworkers. This subject aligned with his political views, idealistic 19th century anarchism, which valued the lives of workers, both rural and urban, and advocated for a more egalitarian society. His paintings, the artist thought, would educate his wealthy urban collectors about the lives of workers. In the midst of this crisis, he first met the younger artists Georges Seurat (French, 1859-1891) and Paul Signac (French, 1863-1935), who were engaged in reinterpreting Impressionist theory using a more precise application of paint according to scientific color theory. Seurat’s Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (1884-1886) is the best known work in which the Neo-Impressionist ideas were applied. Pissarro who was always drawn to new ideas about art began to explore this more deliberate approach to painting. Hay Harvest, Éragny was painted in the community to which the artist’s large family had moved in 1884. The more uniform paint application and the use of small strokes of complementary colors have the effect of weaving the landscape and the figures into a unified tapestry of paint. This unity may have resonated with Pissarro’s political belief in the possibility of a utopian union of individuals in an anarchist society. Eventually though, the artist chafed against the restrictive technique and he returned to his more instinctual approach.
It was impossible to be true to my sensations and consequently to render life and movement, impossible to be faithful to the effects, so random and so admirable, of nature, impossible to give an individual character to my drawing, [that] I had to give up. – Camille Pissarro
In the 1890s, Pissarro was unable to work outdoors due to a recurring eye infection; instead he would stay in various hotels and paint the scene outside his window. He visited many cities in northern France, as well as returning to London three times (1890, 1892, and 1897). In Steamboats in the Port of Rouen, the artist looked down from his window to the clouds of steam emitted by the boats and factories in the harbor. The mixing of the steam and cloudy sky is reminiscent of Monet’s paintings of the Saint-Lazare railway station from the 1870s, while the interwoven brushstrokes suggest the influence of Pissarro’s Neo-Impressionist years. The harbor subject looks even further back, to the artist’s youth sketching ships on St. Thomas.
Pissarro, like many of his Impressionist colleagues, was interested in the way the landscape was changing with the advent of the Industrial Revolution, including factories, railways and steamships. The Impressionists recorded these changes without negative judgments, but as part of the world which they wished to document as they actually experienced it. Similarly, in his series of Paris views made in the 1890s, Pissarro recorded the drastic changes the city had undergone during the renovations led by Georges-Eugène Haussmann between 1853 and 1870. In La Place du Théâtre Français, the artist looked almost straight down on the broad open plaza across which pedestrians, private carriages, public transportation, and commercial vehicles move. A few bare trees and the filtered light tell us it is winter, but Pissarro was clearly more interested in the newly open spaces and the greater freedom of physical and social movement they allowed. The artist visited various places around the city, depicting Haussmann’s plazas, parks, and boulevards in every season and time of day.
Though less famous today than some Impressionist colleagues, Camille Pissarro was beloved of those colleagues, as well as of a host of older and younger artists, many of whom called him Père (Father) Pissarro. Fatherly care came naturally to the artist, who had eight children, of whom six grew up to become artists. Several later generations of Pissarro’s descendants followed the family career path as well. The artist’s legacy also includes the students who learned from him. Mary Cassatt (American, 1844-1926) said of her friend that he was such a fine teacher “that he could have taught the stones to draw correctly” and Paul Gauguin (French, 1848-1903) acknowledged Pissarro as his master. Pissarro’s achievements deserve far greater acclaim than they have receive today, though the artist himself only cared for fame because it led to sales which allowed him to continue his life in painting.
I will calmly tread the path I have taken, and try to do my best. – Camille Pissarro
Exhibition:
The Honest Eye: Camille Pissarro’s Impressionism, through February 8, 2026, at Denver Art Museum, 100 West 14th Avenue Parkway, Denver, Colorado, USA. https://www.denverartmuseum.org/en/exhibitions/honest-eye-camille-pissarro
Pissarro’s works are also included in:
Radical Harmony: Helene Kröller-Müller’s Neo Impressionism, through February 8, 2026 at National Gallery of Art, Trafalgar Square, London, England, UK. https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/exhibitions/radical-harmony-neo-impressionists
Collecting Impressionism at LACMA, opening December 21, 2025 at Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 5905 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, California, USA. https://www.lacma.org/art/exhibition/collecting-impressionism-lacma
Thanks for reading, liking, sharing, and commenting. I’ll have more art to share soon.
I decided it was past time to set aside whatever it was I felt I needed to do and do as I wished, which was to read this wonderful post. As always, your choices of paintings (the early one in the Virgin Islands, the painting on the palette! and the Hay Harvest) offer us so much more of Pissarro's depth and range and experimentation than one ordinarily sees. I recently read a wonderful book by T. J. Clark about Cézanne ("If These Apples Should Fall") and was enthralled by the chapter on Pissarro's impact on Cézanne. At one point, Clark observes of Pissarro: "The world, says Pissarro, no longer offers itself in the form of a prospect or a view. Our entry into the picture’s fiction is not by means of a way to be walked down step by step. Ruysdael and Claude are behind us. The world has to happen to a picture–the world’s totality of light, in particular."
So glad to see Pissarro featured. Love his work and appreciate his commitment to supporting other artists. The art world owes him a debt of gratitude