Camille Pissarro Camille Pissarro

Camille Pissarro

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A senior figure of the Impressionist movement, French artist Camille Pissarro was significant for his mentoring of younger artists and his idyllic paintings of rural life outside Paris. Pissarro also had a great influence on Post-Impressionist painters such as Paul Cézanne and Georges Seurat, making him a decisive character in the development of modern art.

Pissarro was the only artist to exhibit in all eight Impressionist exhibitions, acting as constant source of encouragement for the...

‘We learned everything we do from Pissarro ... it’s he who was really the first Impressionist.’

Paul Cézanne
 

Pissarro was the only artist to exhibit in all eight Impressionist exhibitions, acting as constant source of encouragement for the other artists. During the Franco-Prussian War he, like Monet, fled to London. Here they saw paintings by J. M. W. Turner and John Constable that influenced them greatly in the development of the Impressionist style. Pissarro returned to France in 1872 and painted primarily out-of-doors, perfecting the Impressionist technique of short strokes of broken colour, depicting countryside scenes of fields, haystacks, river valleys and peasants. 

‘Work at the same time on sky, water, branches, ground, keeping everything going on an equal basis ... Don't be afraid of putting on colour ... Paint generously and unhesitatingly, for it is best not to lose the first impression.’
Camille Pissarro
‘... we learned everything we do from Pissarro ... it’s he who was really the first Impressionist.’
Paul Cézanne

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