Original subtitles

Between 1874 and 1886, the city of Paris was the venue for an artistic revolution.

The eight exhibitions of work by the artists who became known as the Impressionists,

Monet, Renoir and Degas, were amongst the now famous names who featured at these exhibitions.

But the only major artist represented at all eight was Camille Pissarro.

Today, Pissarro's works sell for millions, but during his lifetime, success was often elusive.

It took time for his genius to be recognised, but genius it undoubtedly was.

As a man, he was a radical, a passionate believer in the importance of the individual.

He also took a radical approach to his art.

A pioneer of Impressionism, he later abandoned the style completely before returning to it

and producing some of the greatest images of the whole Impressionist age.

It is for this artistic journey that Pissarro remains celebrated today.

Camille Pissarro was the oldest of the Impressionists.

He was born in July 1830 at St Thomas, a West Indian island, where his French-Jewish father ran a prosperous general store.

At the age of 11, the boy Pissarro was sent to boarding school in Paris, where he first displayed an enthusiasm for art.

Returning home at the age of 17, he then worked as a clerk in the family business, but without any great enthusiasm for his job.

It relegated what was now his real passion, painting, to a spare-time activity.

Pissarro grew frustrated, and when a chance came to escape from St Thomas, he seized the moment.

In 1852, he became acquainted with a travelling Danish artist, Fritz Melbae.

When Melbae chose to move on to Venezuela, Pissarro decided to leave his job and go with him.

Later in life, he explained his reasons.

In 1852, I was a well-paid clerk in St Thomas, but I could stand it no longer.

Without a second thought, I threw in the towel and headed for Caracas.

It was the first bold decision of Pissarro's life.

It would not be the last.

Pissarro spent two years in the Venezuelan capital.

He survived by painting portraits, and he grew ever more convinced of his destiny as a painter.

When he eventually returned to St Thomas in 1854, he was able to convince his father that his future lay in art.

That meant the young man would have to leave the Caribbean once more and return to the very centre of French artistic life, Paris.

What he carried with him when he went to France was his love of the countryside.

So he began, in fact, painting the countryside.

And although later on in his life he was interested in including people because he was a socialist

and he wanted to put people working in the countryside to portray the countryside properly,

basically he was a landscape painter, and that's how his upbringing influenced him.

He never left that love behind.

Because he was born so far away from the heart of France,

he had a much slower development than the other Impressionists.

His ideas were slightly more in tune with the Barbizon painters, artists like Mier and Courbet,

and provided, in some senses, a mediating force between the Barbizon painting and that earlier phase from the 1850s and the early 1860s,

to Impressionism from the later 1860s and into the 1870s.

The 25-year-old Pissarro arrived back in the French capital in the autumn of 1855,

assisted by a small financial allowance from his father.

As an aspiring artist, the timing of his arrival was excellent.

He was able to visit the last days of the World's Fair, one of the many expositions of the age.

It included a large exhibition of paintings by the greatest French artists of the day.

Pissarro was hugely impressed with the canvases on show.

He especially admired the work of some of the more innovative artists.

These included the realists Gustave Courbet and Jean-Francois Millet,

both famed for their images of working peasants in a rural setting.

Also of interest to Pissarro was the work of Camille Corot,

an enthusiast for the then-unfashionable art of landscape painting.

Courbet, very much an urban-based artist,

but also the Barbizon school with Corot and Millet,

were concerned with the contemporary and the ordinary.

That was a profound influence upon Camille Pissarro's approach

to subject matter and to the purpose of painting.

Corot was among the first French landscapists to paint outdoors in the open air.

Previously, a landscape painting was only sketched outdoors.

The final canvas was executed in the studio.

But in the mid-19th century, Camille Corot and the painters of the so-called Barbizon school

reacted against the old tradition.

Their outdoor images were fresher, lighter,

and were often characterised by a greater sense of realism

than the dark-toned historical works favoured by the annual official exhibition of French art,

the Salon.

These were the artists that influenced the young Pissarro,

as they would all the great Impressionists.

Pissarro's first master, whom he chose, was Corot,

who was, of course, a landscape painter,

who went outside to paint.

And this was something that Pissarro started doing.

After a few years, from the 50s to the early 60s,

of aligning himself to Corot,

Pissarro changed his allegiance, really, to Corbet

and began including figures more in his work,

even some quite large-figure compositions.

But what he took from Corbet was the application of paint,

the free brushstroke.

And what appealed to him as well in Corbet

was Corbet's political stance, which was socialist.

Corbet caused a revolution in subject matter.

Instead of painting even the aristocracy, let alone Greek nymphs,

he painted the peasants that he knew from growing up in the countryside.

And his burial at Ornans caused an enormous scandal

because there were life-size peasants dominating the whole picture.

And it was considered very unsuitable,

but this appealed to Pissarro, who was a socialist himself.

Inspired by Corot, Pissarro began to paint out of doors,

continuing his training with spells at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts

and at the famous Swiss Academy.

In 1859, he had his first public success

when the Salon accepted one of his landscapes.

But money was always a problem at this stage of his career.

This was in spite of the continuing support of his family,

who had also returned to Paris.

At times, Pissarro was once again compelled to work for the relocated family business,

but he was able to continue painting, mostly in the open air.

Sadly, few of those early works have survived.

One that has dates from 1864,

a depiction of the banks of the River Marne.

This canvas was another successful Salon entry.

But it is a disappointingly subdued image.

Significantly, it is a canvas painted in the studio,

almost certainly executed with a conservative taste of the Salon in mind.

Like many artists of his age,

Pissarro was prepared to compromise his art for the sake of commercial success.

The Salon in the 60s, certainly,

and, of course, later as well,

was very important for most artists.

In the 60s, the Impressionists considered the Salon important

because there was no other outlet for them.

If they didn't show their paintings in the Salon,

they would have great difficulty finding buyers

and establishing a reputation for themselves.

At the early part of Pissarro's career,

exhibiting at the Salon was almost essential.

It was really the only way an artist could ever hope to become a professional artist.

It was the only exhibiting venue he had.

He wanted to paint peasants-orientated paintings.

Now, there was, in fact, a niche for that kind of artist within the Salon at the time,

despite the fact that the majority of paintings were classical paintings from Greece and Rome.

It gave him an intro into the Salon,

but it was never one that allowed him really to build very much of a career on,

and so he looked outside of that system.

In 1864, Pissarro's desire for commercial success was understandable.

He was now head of his own family.

Four years previously, he took up with his mother's maid, Julie Vellet.

In 1863, the still unmarried couple had a son, Lucien,

the first of their six children who would reach adulthood.

Money now became even tighter, but somehow the young family survived.

In 1866, the Pissarros moved to the town of Pontoise, to the north-west of Paris.

It was cheap, and it gave Camille Pissarro the opportunity to paint in the open air.

But he was now in his mid-thirties, and his art was still evolving.

Pissarro's influences revealed themselves in his work.

In Barges at La Roche-Guillon, from 1865,

he used the palette knife in the manner of Gustave Courbet.

The continuing influence of Corot also made itself felt

in canvases such as this 1868 image of the Pothius Quay at Pontoise,

although Pissarro's contrasting of light and shade

is more striking than that of the older artist.

The late 1860s also saw Pissarro influenced by painters younger than himself.

By the time this canvas was painted,

Pissarro was already in regular contact with a group of artists

with whom he would become forever associated,

the painters known to posterity as the Impressionists.

He developed a characteristic separate style from the other Impressionists.

With Pissarro's painting, we see a very much more low-toned, rather quiet kind of painting.

His brushstrokes tend to be smaller, rather more speckled than the other painters,

and his paintings are quite characteristic.

One can recognise a Pissarro as being distinct from, say, a Monet or a Renoir.

Pissarro had first met Claude Monet as early as 1859,

and by the late 1860s, he had struck up a friendship

with the self-confident young artists from Le Havre.

They met regularly at Paris' Café Gerbois,

along with other young painters, including Auguste Renoir,

Alfred Sisley,

and Frederic Basile.

When the Impressionists began to discuss their work,

they tended to look back at artists whose work was akin to theirs.

Howells was a painter who painted very freely in the way that the Impressionists did.

Very often, Howells' portrait was done just in one sitting, two or three hours.

He was the only painter in the 17th century who would do this,

and his paintings have the spontaneity that Impressionist paintings have.

But at the same time, they found Jan Vermeer.

Vermeer was an artist who was virtually unknown at the time.

When he died in 1675, he almost disappeared into obscurity

until the middle of the 19th century.

The Impressionist artists could see how Vermeer had used blue and purple

in the shadows when all artists had,

so that he understood how colour operated

in the same way that the Impressionists worked.

The 17th century Dutch were concerned with the contemporary and the ordinary.

He was an artist producing very direct and very simple work,

concentrating upon the quality of light,

figures and interiors seen in relation to light,

with broad brushstrokes, broad areas of colour,

not huge amounts of detail at all.

These were very much part and parcel of the thinking of people like Pissarro,

people like the other, some of the other Impressionists.

Though no records survive of their conversations at the Gebois,

it is known that Pissarro was the most keen to talk politics.

Perhaps prompted by his financial difficulties,

Pissarro had become a political radical,

a Republican with a strong belief in the rights of the individual.

In time, this belief led to his embracing the philosophy of anarchism,

and he threw off his Jewish upbringing to become a militant atheist.

In addition to politics,

the young artists at the Café Gebois often discussed their own work.

Stimulated by these discussions,

the paintings of Monet, Renoir, Pissarro and others

began to display certain similarities of approach.

These included an emphasis on open-air landscape painting,

the use of choppy brushwork that obscured detail,

and a belief in contemporary subject matter.

They began to reject the dark tones of the typical salon painting,

and came to the viewpoint that light was more important than form.

In the late 1860s,

these themes established themselves among the artists at the Café Gebois.

These were the basic tenets of what would become known as Impressionism.

As Impressionism, the Reborsens developed,

the techniques which were employed

followed the particular way in which the artists were going.

We can see quite the difference, for instance,

between Monet and between Degas.

There was more of a consistency in Pissarro's work,

as far as I see it,

than there was an argument of the other Impressionists.

There is a developing interest in colour,

there is a consistency in his subject matter.

He's concerned with the surroundings.

He's concerned with, be it the Auden village or the town.

And that he pursued, therefore,

a more logical and reasoned path.

The Café Gebois artists also discuss new theories of colour,

notably the work of Eugène Chevril,

a chemist who discovered that an individual colour

is not absolute in its effect,

but contingent upon the colours that surround it.

In the summer of 1869,

Claude Monet and Auguste Renoir

incorporated these theories in their famous paintings

of La Grenoire,

a bathing spot at the Parisian riverside suburb of Bougival.

For many, the work they produced that summer

marks the birth of Impressionist painting.

But it was not only Monet and Renoir

who painted at Bougival.

Camille Pessaro was there as well.

In the spring of 1869,

he had moved with his family to nearby Louveciennes.

That summer, he too painted at La Grenoire.

There were a number of places near to Paris,

or in the larger confines of Paris,

to which a number of Impressionists went

for their subject matter.

Surah is concerned with the people.

Renoir, likewise.

Monet and Pissarro seem more concerned

with other more sort of natural effects

within an urban environment.

It was a quality of light reflecting off the water,

which, for instance, Monet,

to a certain extent Pissarro,

were concerned with.

It was reflections of light and colour,

almost in an abstract sense.

The actual individuals, or the buildings,

individual trees, individual people,

were not as relevant as the visual effect.

In the early part of his career,

Pissarro's paintings were accepted by the Salon,

that is, in the late 50s, early 60s.

And when he began painting like this

in the mid-60s and late 60s,

his paintings were not accepted by the Salon.

He began taking a serious interest in colour

from reading Chevreul's book on colour theory

and observing for himself

that light altered the colour of things.

He also realised that shadows were not black,

but were various colours, in fact,

and even sometimes had complementary colours

reflecting through them.

So, in fact, he was one of the main supporters

of the idea of an alternative exhibition

for the Impressionist group themselves,

and he fully supported this idea

all the way through his career.

The similarity between the approach of Monet, Renoir and Pissarro

can be seen clearly with Diligence at Louvre-Siennes,

a Pissarro canvas from 1870

that uses small dabs of colour

to create a light, shimmering

and profoundly Impressionist image.

Its technical inspirations are identical

to those that informed the work of Monet in particular.

But soon after this canvas was completed,

Pissarro and Monet found themselves with more in common

than just their art technique.

In July 1870, the Franco-Prussian War broke out.

By the end of the year,

both Monet and Pissarro were in exile

in the capital of the British Empire, London.

Pissarro's exile was perhaps surprising.

As a radical republican, he was keen to fight

once the Emperor Napoleon had been deposed

and a new republic declared.

But his mother reminded him of his family obligations,

and so Pissarro left Louvre-Siennes.

He travelled first to Brittany and then, in December 1870, to London.

Pissarro actually had relatives in London

and he went to live in Norwood, in South London.

And he painted places like Penge Station

and Upper Norwood and Dulwich College.

And a lot of his most characteristic, most well-known,

and in a way his most atmospheric paintings

came from that little period when he was working in London.

It's very evident that they are England rather than northern France.

This became a sign for him that he could create images

that gave a sense of place

and not simply the sense of the light effects

within a strict impressionist theory.

It was a mixed time for him.

On the positive side,

he was able to study the great works of Turner and Constable,

alongside his fellow exile, Monet.

He also continued to paint,

producing memorable images

of the South London suburbs where he lived,

including this painting of the famous Crystal Palace.

He met Paul Durand-Royer,

the art dealer,

who, more than anyone,

would back the impressionists with hard cash.

Finally, Pissarro used the London exile

to legitimise his relationship with Julie.

In June 1871,

they married at a register office in Croydon.

But by then,

Pissarro was desperate to return to France.

That month,

he wrote bitterly to a friend.

Here, there is no art.

Everything is a matter of business.

It is only abroad that you realise

just how beautiful,

great and hospitable France is.

But when he was able to return to his home,

later in 1871,

he found a disastrous scene waiting for him.

Prussian soldiers had used his Lufsien house as a billet,

with terrible consequences

for the hundreds of paintings

the artist had had to leave behind.

Pissarro himself estimated

that over 1,200 paintings and drawings

had been taken or destroyed.

This is the reason why so little of his 1860s work

can still be seen today.

Remarkably,

Pissarro appears not to have brooded long

on this undoubted disaster.

No sooner had he returned to Lufsien

than he was once more painting in the area.

Road at Lufsien gives a flavour of this post-war work,

as does Wash House at Bougival,

an 1872 canvas

with a strong emphasis

on the physical labour of the washerwomen.

Many times in his career,

Pissarro returned to the theme of working people,

and people themselves tend to be emphasised more

in Pissarro's work

than that of the other great Impressionists.

But when this canvas was produced,

the term Impressionism was still unknown.

So were its major practitioners,

virtually all of whom

had given up submitting works to the salon.

Camille Pissarro was now in his early 40s

and still struggling,

although Paul Durand-Royal

did purchase the Crystal Palace

and other canvases for small,

but badly needed, sums of money.

In August 1872,

with his family,

Pissarro moved back to the town of Pontoise,

to the district of L'Hermitage,

where he continued to paint

and be exposed to artistic ideas.

In 1877,

he painted Côte de Boeuf L'Hermitage,

a work which shows the influence

of a fellow artist and friend

who had also moved to the area,

Paul Cézanne.

They were working together in 1974

and they both did paintings

of red roofs,

of pontoires.

And Cézanne probably learnt from Pissarro

something about constructing a painting.

And of course Cézanne went on

to make amazingly constructed,

thought-through paintings

after that period of working with Pissarro

and he referred later in life to Pissarro

as the great Pissarro,

as his master.

What Pissarro learnt from Cézanne

was perhaps something about colour,

a certain confidence

in approaching the motif.

On the surface,

if we looked at a typical Cézanne work,

for instance,

and a typical Pissarro work,

there doesn't seem to be

much connection at all.

What we've got to look at

is particularly the early period

of Cézanne,

say,

The House of the Hanged Man

by Cézanne,

and if we look at works

by Pissarro like,

for instance,

Red Roofs,

we can see quite clearly

that the,

not simply the use of paint,

because that is very similar,

thick paint,

paint which is short,

that is,

it does not have a lot of oil in it,

very opaque,

there's no transparent washes

as we see in native Cézanne,

for instance.

Probably use of the palette knife

as well as the brush.

And the subject matter,

it is an ordinary house,

just as Red Roofs,

it's an ordinary village

which Pissarro has painted.

Both of them are houses

seen through trees.

Cézanne was already working

upon a method of painting,

that is a few short brushstrokes,

one way,

and then a few short brushstrokes

another way.

This is something

that Pissarro seemed to take up.

Pissarro's regard

for his friend Cézanne

was demonstrated in 1874.

That year,

work by both artists

was displayed

at a remarkable event.

It was an independent

exhibition of art.

organised by the artists

whose approach

would soon become known

as Impressionism.

They included Monet,

Renoir,

Degas,

and Pissarro,

who contributed manfully

to the organisation

of the event.

This included

his personal insistence

that work by Cézanne

should be included

in the show,

which opened in Paris

in April of 1874.

The failure of the exhibition

is now a famous moment

in the history of art.

Critics rushed to condemn

the works on display,

including Pissarro's,

and sales were minimal.

But the 1874 event

did generate interest,

even if it was

usually negative.

But at the very least,

it gave the new group

of artists a name.

One of the works on display

at the show

was Monet's

Impression Sunrise.

The critic,

Louis Leroy,

borrowed the title

of this seascape

and condemned

the whole 1874 event

as

The Exhibition

of the Impressionists.

The name stuck,

and subsequent exhibitions

were advertised

as Impressionist events.

In all,

eight exhibitions

took place in Paris

between 1874

and 1886,

with the critics

and public

growing ever more appreciative

of the work on display.

Of the many great artists

who contributed

to the exhibitions,

only Pissarro

was present at the mall,

an Impressionist painter

with his own

unique approach.

In the 70s,

his pictures

were more structured.

Maybe it was

the legacy of Corot,

but he was interested

in composition

and volume,

for example,

in a way that

Monet was not.

Monet's paintings

became dominated

by the brushstroke,

whereas Pissarro's,

although the brushstroke

was very important,

they also had

a certain tightness

about the composition,

which marks him out

from Monet

and Renoir,

in fact.

So he was a more

structural painter

at that point

in his career.

In the 1870s,

Pissarro's regular

contributions

contributions to Impressionist shows

did little to improve

his financial well-being.

An economic recession

hung in the air.

Dealers like Paul Durand-Royal,

who admired the Impressionists,

were unable to buy their work.

By now,

Camille Pissarro

was well into his 40s

and often depressed

at the apparent failure

of his career.

In 1873,

he executed

this self-portrait,

which perhaps captures

something of the seriousness

of his life at the time.

We know that,

at times,

his wife begged him

to give up painting

and get a steady job.

It's fortunate

that he didn't.

Over the next 30 years,

he created

some of the finest paintings

of the Impressionist age,

and success

would eventually be his.

Rural themes

continued to feature

strongly in his work.

1873's

The Haystacks,

Pontoise,

shows the artist's ability

to capture

a fleeting moment

in the everyday life

of the countryside.

As in many Pissarro images,

working people

are also included

in the scene.

As we've seen,

Pissarro was always keen

to incorporate men and women

into his landscapes.

A striking example of this

was The Threshing Machine

from 1876,

a painting

whose themes include

the nobility of toil

and the dubious benefits

of the Industrial Age,

all unified

by typically

Impressionist brushwork.

By the early 1880s,

the depiction

of rural labour

had become

the dominant theme

in Pissarro's art.

By that time,

his fortunes

were at last

beginning to change.

The end of the recession

meant that

Douane Royale

and others

were able to buy

Impressionist paintings

once again.

But around this time,

Camille Pissarro

began to move away

from some of the main

tenets of Impressionism.

Significantly,

he began to eschew

landscapes

in favour of

figure painting.

His subjects

were the men

and women

of France's

rural peasant classes.

Time and again,

he painted

young women

tending animals

in the field,

a choice

of subject matter

that had also

been made

earlier in the century

by Jean-Francois Millet.

Millet's work

was seen by many

as overtly political,

and it's possible

to see a political message

in Pissarro's work,

especially his images

of rural labour.

By the mid-1880s,

he had become

a follower

of the radical

political philosophy

of anarchism.

With this in mind,

it's difficult to believe

that his many images

of labouring peasants

were entirely devoid

of a political subtext.

Pissarro was

very much socialist.

He had this idea

that work

was an honourable activity.

Work where one

used one's hands

was real work.

And so his paintings

tend to show pictures

of scullery maids,

people working out

in the fields,

and they do tend

to depict people

rather more distinctly

than somebody like Monet.

For Pissarro,

it is a specific painting

of a person,

usually doing

a particular job.

So there is

a certain sense

of his underlying

political philosophy

coming out

through his paintings.

His philosophy

was that he was concerned

that we should all

be concerned

with everybody,

in a sense everybody

is equal,

and that there are

structures which get

in the way of that

and they need

to be dismantled.

Political structures

as well as things

like aristocracy

and also the economic structure,

the capitalist system.

But anarchist

is not something

which is necessarily destructive.

What it was concerned with

was what we might call now

left-wing socialism.

It disagreed

with the contemporary

order of society,

particularly in its relation

to people.

In the late 1880s,

Pissarro's radicalism

in politics

was joined

by a similar boldness

in his approach

to painting.

If we look at

The Gleaners

from 1889,

we can see this

dramatically.

In subject matter,

it is typical

Pissarro.

It depicts

the rural tradition

of gleaning,

whereby poor peasants

could collect

any corn

left in the field

after harvest.

In 1857,

Millet famously

depicted the same subject.

But Pissarro's painting

is totally different

from Millet.

It's also easy

to see that it

differs radically

from his own

earlier work.

Remarkably,

in the late 1880s,

Pissarro abandoned

Impressionism

completely.

The stimulus

for this change

in technique

came directly

from the artist

Georges Surat.

In 1884,

at the age of 24,

Surat announced

himself to the world

with his famous

large painting,

The Bathers.

It was a

revolutionary canvas.

Drawing on the latest

in colour theories,

Surat had pioneered

the technique

known as

divisionism

or pointillism.

This involved

the use of

individual dots

of unmixed paint,

painstakingly applied

to the canvas.

It was a complex

and self-consciously

scientific approach

to painting.

As applied by Surat,

pointillism resulted

in monumental images

seemingly frozen

in time.

Soon after,

the bathers went

on show,

other artists

began to employ

his innovations

and Surat's approach

became widely known

as Neo-Impressionism.

Neo-Impressionism

in some ways

was an extension

of Impressionism

in that it used

tiny brushstrokes

but it was disciplined

to adopt.

It was interested

in colour theory

which it carried

to extremes.

And the resulting

paintings of Surat

have a very disciplined

stillness about them

which is not something

that the Impressionists,

one would have thought,

were interested in

because what the Impressionists

wanted to capture

was the passing moment

whereas Surat's paintings

were constructed

in the studio

from lots and lots

of sketches

it's true,

beautiful sketches.

But then,

he disciplined himself

to such a degree

that I feel personally

there is no spontaneity

left in his paintings.

Camille Pissarro's conversion

to Neo-Impressionism

was dramatic.

In 1885,

he met Surat

and his fellow

Neo-Impressionist

Paul Signac.

The next year,

Pissarro used his influence

to enable Surat

and Signac

to exhibit

at that year's

Impressionist show.

Surat exhibited

La Grande Jatte,

a painting possibly

even greater

than The Bathers.

Pissarro also exhibited

and his paintings

were so similar

to Surat's

that critics

had to look

for the artist's signature

on the canvas

to tell them apart.

Rarely in the history

of art

has the work

of a great painter

been so dramatically

influenced

by that of a fellow artist.

Pissarro was

always interested

in new ideas.

Surat introduced him

to a completely new

form of painting

which was known

as Divisionist

or Neo-Impressionism.

What it was,

essentially,

was the ideas

that had been around

in Impressionism

Theory.

Surat had taken

those ideas

and systematised

them into a much

more scientific

way of looking

at the world

and because Pissarro

was interested

in looking

at the material world

from,

in a sense,

a quasi-scientific

viewpoint,

he reverted

to this method

of Divisionist painting.

It was only later,

around about 1886,

that he felt

that it was a bit

of a straightjacket

on his own

particular ideas.

From then on,

he reverted back

rather more

to his earlier style.

Surat was much

younger than Pissarro

and Pissarro tended

to befriend

and support

young artists

artists, and this he did

with Surah.

Pissarro had already

formulated his own

colour theory

about reflection

and local colour

and shadows.

The small dot

fascinated him

because he felt

it would enable him

to more clearly

portray the juxtaposition

of colours,

which was then

supposed to mix

in the onlooker's eye,

thus retaining

a brightness

because the colour

reflected the light.

The second half

of the 1880s

saw Pissarro

fully committed

to neo-impressionist

technique.

The Gleaners

provides enduring

evidence of the artist's

remarkable conversion.

Woman in an

enclosure

painted in 1887

is another

canvas of the period

executed with

the dot technique.

While this image

of a foggy day

at Ile-la-croix

at the port of Rouen

remains a fine study

in atmosphere

and light

composed using

the pointillist method.

But images like this

proved unpopular.

Many of Pissarro's

fellow artists

condemned

the sheer speed

with which he had

adopted the technique

pioneered by Surat.

Many admirers

of Pissarro

have argued

that his

neo-impressionist works

are simply

not in the same

category of greatness

as those of

the younger artists.

Possibly

Pissarro

realised this

himself.

We do know

that by the end

of the 1880s

he sought to return

to the more

spontaneous approach

of his earlier career.

By 1890

he had abandoned

neo-impressionism

forever.

He was now

60 years old

and growing

ever more secure

at least financially.

His impressionist

canvases

began to sell

for good prices

and the Pissarro

family

were able to

by a large

house at

Irani

a village

to the north

of the town

of Gisors.

The art market

was beginning

to change.

Exhibitions

of single artists

began to take place.

Dealers

such as

Durand Royale

grew increasingly

powerful

and the power

of the once

mighty salon

began to diminish.

Increasingly

the public

and the critics

realised the greatness

of the impressionist

of the impressionist

artists

Pissarro

included.

Unfortunately

for the artist

in 1889

he suffered

a serious

eye infection.

As a result

he was left

physically unable

to paint

out of doors.

As someone

who had believed

in open air

painting all

his working life

it was potentially

a disaster.

But his response

was admirable.

He began to paint

scenes from indoors

looking out

for the windows.

A fine example

is this

1897 image

of the vegetable

garden

at his

Irani home

one of many

fine 1890s

canvases

inspired by

his property.

But the artist

often grew

restless

with Irani

prevented

from painting

outdoors

the frustration

he must have

felt is easy

to imagine.

As a reaction

he began

to travel more.

The 1890s

saw Pissarro

moving on

from place

to place

primarily

painting

from hotel

rooms.

Like his

friend Claude

Monet

he began

to produce

series of

paintings

depicting

the same

scene

at different

times of the

day

and in

different

climatic

conditions.

The finest

of these

works were

produced

during two

journeys

made by

Pissarro

to the

city

that had

inspired

him before

a place

that would

also inspire

Monet

to great

achievement

the city

of Rouen.

Pissarro's

paintings at

Rouen were

primarily

concerned

as far as

I can

understand it

with it

as a

bustling

industrial

urban

society.

We see

these works

in that

context

and I

think we

can

understand

them.

This

is the

contemporary

and the

real

his

anarchist

philosophy

in the

sense

that is

what is

the

reality

of life

that is

work

whether

it be

the

harbour

whether

it be

the

industrial

buildings

that is

as I

feel

his main

concern

at Rouen.

At Rouen

unlike

Monet's

paintings of

the cathedral

Pissarro

went and

painted the

docks.

This

of course

reflects his

own political

interests

and his

socialist

leanings.

He wanted

to paint

workers

he wanted

to paint

real life

The Rouen

paintings are

just part

of the

great body

of work

produced by

Pissarro

during the

1890s

the last

full decade

of his

life.

With every

passing year

his status

and wealth

grew but

he continued

to move

on spending

as little

time as

possible

at his

Iranian

home.

Increasingly

it was Paris

that provided

the artist

with his

inspiration

and a

painter

who had

devoted

his life

to rural

open-air

painting

now turned

his hand

to

cityscapes

executed

indoors.

The results

were remarkable.

The Parisian

series paintings

represent the

final stage

of Pissarro's

artistic development

and his

final triumph

as an artist.

The

Pont Neuf

provided Pissarro

with the subject

matter for many

of his later

works.

This 1902

canvas named

after the

bridge proves

that even

in the last

full year

of his life

Pissarro

was capable

of executing

a masterpiece.

The brushwork

captures fully

the bustle

and pace

of city life

in the new

20th century.

But Pissarro's

Pont Neuf series

also includes

images such as

the Pont Neuf

monument to

Henry IV

north fog

which is more

a study of

the city's

atmosphere

than the

city's

people.

The famous

Tuileries

gardens also

attracted the

attention of

Pissarro

but of all

his Parisian

paintings

it is those

that depict

the Boulevard

Montmartre

that remain

the most

famous.

In 1897

Pissarro took

a room

at the

Hotel de

Russie

and began

to paint

images of

the thoroughfare

below.

In all

he executed

14

canvases

of the

Boulevard

Montmartre.

Here

we see

the busy

boulevard

in afternoon

sunshine.

There is

movement

there is

life

and there

is light

all executed

in the

choppy

brushstrokes

that had

outraged

established

opinion

just a

quarter

of a

century

before.

By now

images

like this

and this

companion

piece

showing

the

boulevard

on a

rainy

afternoon

were

better

understood

by

many

of them

now

realized

how to

appreciate

impressionist

work

to stand

back

from the

canvas

and take

in the

image

in its

entirety

to apprehend

the fleeting

instant

in much

the same

way

as we

do

in real

life.

There is

no point

looking for

close-up

detail

in a

canvas

such as

this.

This

canvas

depicting

the

great

street

at

night.

It

is a

timeless

shimmering

image,

a

dramatic

exploration

of the

effects

of

artificial

light.

It's

one of

the

finest

paintings

not

only

of the

painter's

career

but

of

the

whole

of

Impressionism,

a

movement

to which

Pissarro

had

contributed

massively.

Pissarro's

contribution

to the

Impressionist

movement

was

huge.

He

supported

the

movement

from

the

beginning

right to

the end,

helping

painters

like

Cezanne

who

doubted

their

capacity,

helping

painters

like

Monet

for

example

when

he

and

Monet

painted

together

at

Le

Grand

Mier.

He

never

lost

his

belief

in

the

movement

and

when

say

in

the

70s

many

of the

Impressionists

were

very

poor

he

encouraged

them

and

kept

them

going

and

kept

them

together.

Whilst

Manet

has often

been referred

to as

the

father

of

Impressionism

I think

it's

a much

more apt

title

to

Zara

because

in

personal

terms

he

supported

and

encouraged

and gave

practical

advice

and

help

to

whole

generations

of

artists

very

mixed

some

who

disagreed

with

him

and

he

was

hurt

by

them

but

nevertheless

he

continued

to

support

them

I think

in that

sense

we're

putting

it

very

managed

and

developed

and

brought

together

whether

it

be

individuals

or

whether

it

be

the

Impressionist

exhibition

he

was

I

think

the

only

Impressionist

artist

who

exhibited

each

of

the

Impressionist

exhibitions

he

was a

constant

stabilizing

factor

within that

which enabled

them

all the

others

to branch

off

in all

sorts

of

different

ways

I

think

a

movement

like

the

Impressionist

needed

somebody

who

was

always

faithful

he

was

the

artist

who

would

never

give

up

who

felt

that

the

ideas

that

the

Impressionist

had

were

sound

and

should

be

taken

forward

so

that

they

would

all

look

to

him

as

a

mentor

as

their

teacher

at

the

end

of

their

lives

almost

all

of

them

said

that

they

owed

their

life

they

owed

their

work

to

what

he

had

done

to

the

way

he

supported

them

how

he

given

them

encouragement

and

without

that

they

wouldn't

have

been

able

to

continue

in

their

own

world

of

all

the

great

artists

of

the

Impressionist

age

Pissarro

is

unquestionably

one

of the

greatest

by

Lucian

went

on

to

become

a

well

known

artist

himself

it's

the

work

of

Camille

Pissarro

that

remains

his

finest

legacy

his

rural

landscapes

his

images

of

labour

his

great

series

paintings

even

his

neo

impressionist

work

in

total

it

remains

a

mighty

achievement

a

radical

artist

response

to

the

ideas

and

techniques

of

one

of

the

most

remarkable

ages

in

the

history

of art

music

music

music