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| Camille Pissarro, "Self Portrait," 1903 |
This week in the Guardian there was a notice of a new exhibition at the Ashmoleon Museum in Oxford, England, devoted to Camille Pissarro (1830-1903), a neglected member of the Impressionist group that included Monet, Renoir and Degas among other luminaries. Known to his fellow painters as Father Pissarro because he was a decade older (Monet was born in 1840), Camille Pissarro did seem to be a kind of paternal presence for at least some of his contemporaries. Unlike his younger contemporaries, he had abundant life experiences, having been born in the tropics, and lived in South America. After moving the Paris in the 1850s he met Claude Monet and Paul Cezanne. He was later tutored by Camille Corot (1796-1875), who inspired him to paint outdoors. Other early influences were Courbet and Millet.
Although he worked and was influenced by a number of the early group and post-impressionist painters too, unlike them he painted out of his interest in the reality of his subjects, without prettifying. That is, he painted subjects that were decidedly noncommercial such as barges, butchers, and sometimes confusing landscapes. He was an idealist and a role model. One of the concepts he espoused to his younger colleagues was to finish the work outdoors, confronting the subject.
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| "Farm at Montfoucault in Snow," ca.1875 |
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| "Pond at Montfoucault," 1874 |
Mr. Pissarro has most commonly taken a back row seat in the pantheon of his times, but this new exhibition, running February 18 to June 22 of this year, provides a wealth of his work and others. The object is to demonstrate his centrality and influence. In another way, the exhibition gives us a painter whose work reflects that of his friends and peers. In work from the Impressionist period, his work can resemble that of Claude Monet, as in "Pond at Montfoucault" and "Farm at Montfoucault," (above). A decade or so later it is pointillism, and his friendship and studies with Georges Seurat and Paul Signac that as in "The Apple Harvest," and "View from my Window," (below). Both of these are featured in the exhibition and on the Ashmoleon website.
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| "The Apple Harvest in Eragny," 1887 |
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| "View from my Window, Eragny," 1888 |
Later he would return to a more realistic style, and painted with a more subtle but knowing touch. His work deserves more attention, and this exhibition provides it. Alas, I will not be able to attend. An exhibition catalog has been published.
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