Original subtitles

Camille Pissarro may be the most underrated painter of the Post-Impressionist era, especially

when you consider his influence on the other painters of the period.

Unlike the other young artists of the Post-Impressionist movement, Pissarro was in his golden years

by the 1880s, but his age and experience made him a valued mentor to many of these up-and-coming

painters. He had traveled more, seen more, and was able to share his wisdom and knowledge

with his friends. Many Impressionists and Post-Impressionists describe him as a father figure, and that probably

wasn't an exaggeration. Many of the Post-Impressionists had strained relationships with their fathers,

as most dads in this era weren't so cool with their kids becoming artists. But Pissarro

was an extraordinary artist because he never stopped growing and changing. He kept a curious

and open mind, and he was always interested in learning the latest techniques and styles.

So that even as he reached the end of his career, he was keeping up with his younger colleagues.

He constantly pushed himself into new and uncomfortable territory, never resting on his laurels. But

that also means he never really settled into a signature style, which poses a problem if

you want people to recognize and remember you as an artist.

Pissarro spanned many worlds, culturally, geographically, and artistically. Being born on the Caribbean

island of St. Thomas in 1830 gave him an interesting perspective, unique among his peers. His father,

Frederick Pissarro, was of Portuguese-Jewish descent, though he had French nationality. His mother,

Rachel, was from a local Franco-Jewish family on St. Thomas, which at that time was a sugar colony,

and part of the Danish West Indies. Frederick and Rachel's story is a typical romance of a man who

comes to take care of his uncle's hardware store, and after he dies, and ends up marrying his uncle's

wife. That's right, you heard me correctly, Camille's mother was also his great aunt. People make interesting

choices when they don't have access to Tinder or Instagram. As you can imagine, their marriage was

the talk of the town, or at least the talk of St. Thomas' small Jewish community, especially because,

according to Jewish law, a man is forbidden from marrying his aunt. But they didn't care. Frederick's

four children attended the all-black primary school as well, showing again that this was not the typical

colonial family. Upon his death, Frederick's will specify that his estate be split equally between the

synagogue and Protestant church on the island. So you can see the family had their feet in several

different communities, which seemed to give Camille a deeper understanding when it came to relating

and empathizing with a wide number of artists. Young Pissar grows up in St. Thomas, playing on the

beach and enjoying the sunshine. When Camille was 12, his father shipped him off to boarding school near

Paris at the Savary Academy in Passy. Here he's exposed to the work of the French masters, and he really

starts to get excited about painting. The headmaster and namesake of the school, Monsieur Savary, happened

to be an artist as well, and tutored Camille personally, giving the young student a solid

foundation to build from. He wisely encouraged Pissar to go outside and paint en plein air when he was back

home in St. Thomas. He's 17 when he comes back home to St. Thomas, and he takes his headmaster's advice

and starts painting as much as he can. The light in the Caribbean is very different from the light he

would have seen in France, because so many things go into the way we experience sunlight—atmosphere,

temperature, humidity, smog, weather, latitude, clouds, and elevation, to name a few. Painting outside

in St. Thomas would have given him a wide exposure to the subtleties in the sky—the lighting and the

water all around the island. His early paintings show how proficient he becomes at capturing the

subtleties of his childhood home. But, surprise, surprise, his dad Frederick soon notices all this

excited painting, and he tried to put a stop to it. He tells Camille, you need to learn the family

business and help me out with this hardware store. You're going to work as a clerk for the cargo ships

coming in and out of port. Camille complies and works at the mind-numbing job for the next four years,

but it's too late. His heart is already set on art, and he's only going to endure this job until he can

get a bit more independence and move on. In the meantime, he's still painting and drawing every

chance he gets, studying the ever-changing light and landscapes across the island, the way the sunset

is softly filtered by the ocean air and glows golden on the beach, the way the palm trees and mountains

jut into the pale, warm blue sky. By a great stroke of luck for Pissarro, there was a Danish artist also

living on St. Thomas named Fritz Melby, one of the three Melby brothers who were famous for their

maritime scenes. Fritz made some quite stunning and romantic paintings of St. Thomas in its glorious

sunsets and storms. Camille must have been drawn to these, and with Melby's encouragement, Camille decides

this time to become a full-time painter. So Camille tells his dad he's done being a human Excel spreadsheet,

and that he's got to follow his heart and become a professional artist. And his heart was telling him

to move to Caracas, Venezuela, where Fritz was heading next. Makes perfect sense, right? Why not?

While in Venezuela, Pissarro drew everything he could, particularly landscapes and scenes of local life,

and he filled up a stack of sketchbooks. Remember, he wouldn't have a camera to record everything and

bring back to his studio later for reference. Everything he wanted to remember visually, he had

to draw or paint. Some of the drawings he made would later turn into watercolors or oils. After two years

in Venezuela, he moves back to Paris in 1855. Fritz's brother Anton was looking for an assistant there,

and this is just the connection Camille needs, and he takes the job. He also enrolls at Ecole des Beaux-Arts,

but like most of the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, he finds it's kind of stuffy and boring there.

But he really likes some of the artists he's studying, in particular Camille Corot and Gustave Corbet,

and even manages to get Corot to start giving him private lessons on the side. Corot and Corbet were very

influential among Impressionists and Post-Impressionists. Corbet was known for his radical politics and his

depictions of peasants and workers, while Corot was also a great advocate of painting on plain air,

and his beautiful landscapes were pointing the way towards Impressionism. Studying with these two

masters gave Pissarro an excellent education for his own career.

Pissarro enters a painting in the Salon for the first time in 1859, and he gets in! This is a huge

deal. Many of the most famous artists of this period would have their work rejected, especially as a young

artist. But Pissarro lands his make-or-break show on his very first attempt. It's especially impressive

because, as we've seen, he hadn't had consistent academic training like some of his peers had.

Most of his artistic development was self-driven.

Pissarro makes a quick name for himself in Paris as a hot young artist. Under Corot's tutelage,

his work of this time was still considered acceptable by the strict standards of the Salon. There was just

enough somber realism in the eyes of the Salon judges to pass muster. Many of Pissarro's paintings

from this era depict placid, rural landscapes just outside Paris. But Pissarro seemed to be getting

increasingly bored of traditional painting, and was interested in pushing the boundary further.

He was developing a deep dissatisfaction with the Academy, despite being accepted and embraced

by the artistic establishment very quickly. It wasn't what he wanted. Small acts of rebellion

start to appear in his work. For instance, here's an unconventional landscape that's one of my

favorites of this era. It's a seemingly simple painting, a somber tone with a bright gray sky.

And the painting features, well, nothing in particular. The focal point is that cloudy sky,

really with some non-remarkable trees and a basic house off to the side. I think it's simplicity and

focus on paint. And what the paint is doing is what makes this work striking. Look closely at how thick

and pasty and gestural the sky is. This isn't a soft, thin, lovely sky. This area has been loaded up with

impasto layers, a technique where the paint is layered on so thickly you can see the brushstrokes

from a distance. Using this method almost emphasizes the emptiness of the sky.

I also love the light effect of the edges of the tree with the leaves. He expertly captures the way a

backlit subject becomes smaller as the light crowds out all the edges of each branch and leaf, rendering

some of them invisible. A few leaves are left floating, but we understand them to be attached

but obscured by the light. It's almost a photographic effect, which is what makes the thick impasto paint

even more surprising to me. A somber, somewhat depressing rural scene like this one isn't a radical

act of defiance, but it's definitely not playing for the approval of the salon crowd either. Yet his

defiance would continue to grow. When asked years later how he believed French art could progress,

Camille famously advised, burn down the Louvre. Pissarro met Paul Cézanne in 1861,

and they were both drawn to the other, as they shared the same dissatisfaction with the Academy.

Cézanne hadn't gotten into the salon and hadn't had a great deal of training either,

but the somewhat older Pissarro could see how naturally talented he was and took him under

his wing. Pissarro was also fascinated by Cézanne's process and ideas. Cézanne in turn clearly admired

Pissarro's unorthodox approach to his art and later wrote that he had the good fortune to be born

in the Antilles, where he learned how to draw without the masters. By 1866, Pissarro had moved to

Pontoise, a town about 20 miles out of Paris. It was an ideal spot for many artists of the time,

close to Paris and yet offering beautiful scenes of rural French life. Here we see a landscape

Pissarro painted here near his new home in 1867. We have a very strong horizontal composition,

with two-thirds land and the top-third sky.

It's very geometric for a landscape. With rolling green hills and full lush trees,

these strong thirds are broken up by the nice sweeping curves of the road.

Even the clouds in the left hillside point us back toward the center, where the focus is on a

density of smaller shapes, almost like a vortex where the large shapes are on the outside and

progressively get smaller toward the center. It pulls you in. We might call this a classic Pissarro

technique because it keeps the focus on the landscape while including the smallest of figures. I like how

these people lined up with the bottom of the trees to emphasize the geometric composition that

overrides the scene. This was a very popular painting and it made it into the salon, where Emil Zola

praised its modernity. He goes on to add,

"...nothing would be more banal were it not so grand."

Okay, Zola, settle down. But I do get what he's saying, as this little slice of normal life has

been elevated as a beautiful and inviting picture to look at. It does have that humble yet heroic

duality happening. So things are really starting to take off for Pissarro. He starts seeing a woman,

and not just any woman. It was his mother's maid, Julie Vallée. How long they knew each other or how

long she worked for them is unclear, but it certainly would have raised quite a few eyebrows. Add to the

fact that a few of their children came before marriage, another taboo. But like his own parents,

they don't listen to the haters. They were in love. They would raise seven children together and have a

long and loving marriage. The couple moved to Louvchen, another town just outside of Paris. And

here, Pissarro is experimenting more with new artistic approaches. By now, he has met other

like-minded experimenters, like Monet, Rodin, and Seurat. Ideas are flowing and exchanging between them.

Pissarro starts to try new techniques, like using loosely placed brush strokes to break up the surface and

create textures that give a sense of energy and movement. These are some of the hallmarks of what

will soon be known as Impressionism. Things are interrupted in 1870 when the Franco-Prussian War begins,

and the Pissarro family flees to London for a couple of years. While he was gone, his house was ransacked and

nearly 1,500 paintings were destroyed by Prussian soldiers. 1,500 paintings! They reportedly used them as mats.

They didn't want to get the floor dirty, I guess. You know how warring all day can muck up your boots.

How considerate of them. But in the end, only about 40 paintings were salvaged, which is why we don't

have much to go by for the first decades of Pissarro's career. This tragedy might have had a silver lining,

though, because losing so many of his paintings in the war seemed to have freed Pissarro artistically.

Unlike many other Impressionists who seemed to come to it naturally,

Pissarro took many years to completely loosen up his brushstrokes. By nature, he was a very accurate

and realistic painter. And that need to articulate details with smooth blending was a tough habit to

kick. But his transition really accelerates when he returns to France after the war.

Consider this painting, A Corner of Hell Hermitage, painted sometime in the 1870s after the war.

It's still composed like the other Pissarro landscapes we've seen. There's rolling hills,

a two-thirds composition, and some small people in the middle of the scene. But you can definitely

start to see a looser and more immediate approach. And the brushstrokes become more apparent. Rather

than blending from light to dark, he's just placing each value down separately. If I'm being honest,

this really isn't a great painting. It looks a bit labored and inconclusive, the brushstrokes hesitant

and lacking confidence, compared to many of his great works. He's still working through the new

techniques and trying to understand how they fit into his practice. But this is just the beginning,

because after the war, Pissarro reconnects with artists like Monet, Renoir, and Degas, and starts

to take a leading role in organizing this group into the movement we call Impressionism. They start

holding their own annual exhibition as an alternative to the Salon. And Pissarro was the only artist to

show in all eight of them. He splits his time between Paris, where he has an apartment and he can keep up

with his artist friends, and Pontoise, where his wife and children are and where he draws inspiration

and can paint in the fresh air. Though Pissarro is one of the oldest in this rebellious group of

artists, it's clear that he's influenced by his young friends, as his style quickly shifts. In this

painting from 1876, we see him loosening up his style. We're getting further away from the detailed,

realistic scenes he's painted for the Salon. The paint is thickly layered and even muddy in parts,

creating a richly textured scene, where light and color are emphasized over precision. The boats,

hazy with smoke, seem to merge into one another. The subject isn't typical for Pissarro either.

A smoky barge carrying goods is a literal and unpleasant intrusion on his pastoral home,

a subject that was considered too crass and common for the Salon, but the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists

loved it. A few years later, in the Harvest Pontoise from 1881, we see Pissarro changing things up again.

His brushstrokes are still broken up and expressive, but now they've become a lot finer and more detailed,

more in his comfort zone. The painting feels light, airy, and colorful, and the subject is back to his

beloved depictions of rural life. Of course, Pissarro isn't the only one who's experimenting and changing

styles over these years. His friends like Monet and Manet are doing the same things, playing around with

new techniques, new ideas, and new approaches. This was what Impressionism was all about, and Pissarro

was in the middle of this revolution. By the early 1880s, Pissarro seems to have embraced the effect

that's created by using small staccato brushstrokes to create colorful and beautiful scenes. But Pissarro

doesn't stay there long. He continues changing styles. In 1885, he met George Seurat and Paul

Signac, who were both pioneering a new technique that used small dots to create colors by way of

optical blending, and using contrasting colors to create vibrance. When you see a painting like the

Apple Harvest from 1888, it's obvious to me he's been very inspired by Seurat. The composition is

filled with light and space, with the big curve of the hill, the warm glow of the sun creating a vibrant

purple, red and blue shadows of the tree. The figures are large and up front, each in a different pose.

They aren't anonymous bodies off in the distance. These folks have some character. So with a painting

like this, it's clear that Pissarro is moving towards post-Impressionism. This ability to reinvent

himself and continue to develop and adapt is what made Pissarro great. He's the only artist who

predated Impressionism, then became an Impressionist, and then became a post-Impressionist, and even went

back to Impressionism somewhat at the end of his career. He was influenced by and influential within

each of these movements. He was both establishment and anti-establishment. As he grew in confidence

about his painting technique, he would offer advice to younger painters. Don't work bit by bit, but paint

everything at once by placing tones everywhere, with brush strokes of the right color and value, while

noticing what is alongside. Use small brush strokes and try to put down your perceptions immediately.

Observe the aerial perspective as well, from the foreground to the horizon. The reflections of the sky,

the foliage. Don't be afraid of putting on color. Refine the work little by little. Don't proceed

according to rules and principles, but paint what you observe and feel. One must only have one master,

nature. In every picture or painting of Pissarro, he has a huge bushy gray or white beard, almost as if

he were born with it. It was his trademark look. He was one of those people who looked old even as a

younger man. But Pissarro's body caught up with his appearance, and by his 60s he had a recurring eye

infection that made it difficult to work like he used to, particularly spending long hours outside.

But by now, he's an established artist, and he's financially comfortable. So he began renting a room

with a balcony at the Grand Hotel de Russie overlooking Boulevard Montmartre, a huge bustling

street, with people of all kinds and from all backgrounds, and a wide variety of transportation types,

from cars and horses to bikes and buggies. This street offered a sweeping vista of Paris during the

Second Industrial Revolution. And it's here, towards the end of his life, with his eyesight and health

on the decline, when he paints his most iconic series. Fourteen plein air paintings at different

times of the day on the Boulevard Montmartre, showing the city in different kinds of weather,

in different kinds of seasons. But they are all from the same point of view on his balcony. The

left sidewalk lines up vertically with the left side of the painting, and the large sidewalk on the

right angles in towards the center, creating space in the corner for all the pedestrians and people on

the street. While each painting is very similar, it only takes a few moments to see all the characters

are different, the light is different, the colors are different. Like sonnets built on a common theme,

each version tells a different story of the same place.

This series is a mix of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. There's very much the quick

study of light and shadow, and the bold contrasting colors of Impressionism. But there's also the

structural shapes and strong architecture, grounding it in history like the Post-Impressionists preferred.

His approach here is not locked into any particular camp. He's just using what comes intuitively to him,

switching up his application for each area of the painting. But the subject is a big change. It's

no longer his beloved pastoral life in rural France. These paintings show the modernity of Paris,

the movement and vibrancy of an iconic city at the pinnacle of an artistic and cultural revolution.

We see wonders of the industrial age, like telephone boxes on the street. And of course,

the city is bustling with huge crowds. Paris' population had nearly tripled in the past half

century. And much of the city had been completely rebuilt into modern, multi-story city blocks like

we see here. The Paris Pissarro scene before him here would have been virtually unrecognizable from the

one he had first visited as a child in the 1840s. The night scenes, though, have to be my favorite.

They show off the glow of the arc lamps and the newly appearing electric lights,

which must have been a wonder to experience for the first time. Buildings blur into each other,

inky wet reflections on the sidewalks and streets. The glow of the city radiates out into the sky,

in a melancholic but strangely triumphant Van Gogh-like gesture. While not as iconic as his

Boulevard Montmartre series, I'd like to finish up looking at Pissarro with this painting from 1893,

one of my favorites. This oil-on-canvas portrait contains several complex areas of varying colors

and textures. While he was not necessarily known for his portraits, I think they can be an important

insight into an artist's character. The way an artist paints other people usually exposes something

about the way they feel about other people. Technically, this is the work of a confident and

mature artist. It starts with a refined and beautiful glow of light coming from the top right that lands

gently on her face. A humble but beautiful and carefully painted face. Look at the contrast between

the dark jacket and the light green scarf that's glowing in the light, revealing the fabric's translucency.

The control over form, value, and volume, while employing such vigorous and active marks,

show an impressive skill balancing action and stillness. There is a tenderness in this painting

that underlies its power. As usual, the colors in a reproduction don't do it justice.

Just in the top right corner, this painting contains reds, yellows, blues, green, pink, and turquoise.

You can find just as many colors in the other areas, carefully composed and proportioned out to create

a balanced and alluring image. One thing that stands out about Pissarro was just how stable

and content his domestic life seemed to be. He was a warm person who loved nature, loved people,

and loved his family. He and Julie Vallée had a long and fruitful marriage. They raised seven children,

six of whom followed their father's footsteps and became painters themselves. Two of his great-grandchildren

are prominent artists today. So Pissarro's perspective was not born out of pain, rejection,

or isolation. It came from his experience traveling and growing up in a diverse family with people from

a wide variety of backgrounds. He wasn't competitive or conceited either. He loved helping other artists

succeed, even as he watched their fame eclipse his own. Younger artists were drawn to his positive,

encouraging nature as much as they respected his painting ability. That openness to others and lack

of ego is probably why he stayed open to new ideas his whole career. He was never too proud to learn

new tricks and change his style. This portrait, to me, captures those qualities that I see in Pissarro.

Humility, confidence, courage, beauty, curiosity, and care. Wise enough to teach some of the greatest

painters in history, but also humble enough to learn from them. Pissarro gave confidence and inspiration

to so many artists of his generation. I think we all could use a friend like Pissarro in our lives.