Pissarro, Camille Jacob

Pissarro, Camille Jacob (1830-1903), French Impressionist painter, whose friendship and support provided encouragement for many younger painters. Pissarro was born in St Thomas, Virgin Islands, and moved to Paris in 1855, where he studied with the French landscape painter Camille Corot. At first associated with the Barbizon School, Pissarro subsequently joined the Impressionists and was represented in all their exhibitions. During the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871) he lived in England and made a study of English art, particularly the landscapes of J. M. W. 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 a freer Impressionist style.

A painter of sunshine and the scintillating play of light, Pissarro produced many quiet rural landscapes and river scenes; he also painted street scenes in Paris, Le Havre, and London. He was an excellent teacher, counting among his pupils and associates Paul Gauguin and Paul Cézanne, his son Lucien Pissarro, and the American Impressionist Mary Cassatt. Pissarro was a prolific artist; many of his paintings, watercolours, and graphics hang in the Luxembourg Gallery, Paris.