Camille Pissarro ( * 1830 † 1903 )

Artist Camille Pissarro

Discover the evocative world of Camille Pissarro – one of the great pioneers of Impressionism! With a keen sense for light, nature, and the everyday, he created landscapes and cityscapes full of atmosphere and color poetry. Explore his works as high-quality art prints, elegantly framed canvas paintings, or artistically hand-painted artworks in customizable sizes!

Camille Pissarro Self-Portrait

Camille Pissarro was born on July 10, 1830, on what are now the United States Virgin Islands in the Caribbean. At that time, the area was part of the Danish colony. Pissarro's mother hailed from the Dominican Republic and had Spanish ancestry. His father's family originally came from Portugal. Pissarro's father envisioned him as the successor to his hardware business. However, Pissarro preferred to spend his leisure time painting. He spent every free minute at the harbor, drawing there. It was there that he made his first connections with other artists. The Danish painter Fritz Melbye recognized his talent and encouraged him, against his father's wishes, to remain faithful to painting.

Pissarro moved to Paris and studied at various art schools there. Influenced by the works of Corot and Courbet, Pissarro became a key figure in the Impressionist movement and was the only artist to be featured in all eight Impressionist exhibitions. 

In his paintings, he captured both rural life and urban scenes, with a particular sensitivity to light, atmosphere, and the mundane. He was a sensitive teacher and mentor, among others, to Cézanne, Gauguin, and Seurat, and was appreciated by many younger artists.

Pissarro is considered one of the most important painters of Impressionism and over the course of his life, developed his style further into Pointillism (dot style). In doing so, he primarily painted with pure, unblended complementary colors, which he arranged in increasingly shorter brushstrokes. Characteristic of Pointillism is—unlike Impressionism—a blending of pure colors to achieve overall harmony.

In the last years of his life, Pissarro returned to the looser brushwork of Impressionism, yet his works always remained dynamic—shaped by the search for new forms of expression. Despite health setbacks that sometimes prevented him from painting outdoors, he remained artistically active until the end of his life and created numerous significant works. Camille Pissarro died on November 12, 1903, at the age of 73 in Paris.

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