Camille Pissarro

1830-1903

Camille Pissarro (1830–1903) was born in Charlotte Amalie on the Danish island of St. Thomas and became one of the founding figures of Impressionism, later embracing Neo-Impressionism in his fifties alongside Seurat and Signac. After early years as a merchant's clerk and self-taught sketcher in the Caribbean and Venezuela, he settled in France, studying informally under Corot and admiring Courbet and Millet before finding his own voice in plein-air landscapes of rural and village life around Pontoise, Louveciennes, and later Éragny. He was the only artist to exhibit in all eight Paris Impressionist exhibitions, and served as a steadying, generous presence for the group, mentoring Cézanne, Gauguin, and other Post-Impressionists. His paintings, prized for their unadorned depictions of ordinary people and rural labor, hang today in major collections including the Met, the Hermitage, and Museum Folkwang. He also held anarchist sympathies that occasionally surfaced in his graphic work.