Impressionism, French Art

Camille Pissarro

Name: Camille Pissarro
Author: Richard Thomson
ISBN: 9780941533904

by Richard Thomson

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Overview

Camille Pissarro (1830-1903) was at the hub of the Impressionist movement. He exhibited at all eight of the group exhibitions, and his paintings appear to typify the Impressionist style. However, his work is very complex and diverse. The variety of media in which he worked—pastel, gouache, etching, even painting on ceramic tiles—and his working practices, which involved careful studio preparation as well as plein air work, raise questions that require us to redefine our concept of Impressionism. Pissarro's own concept of his art interlocked with his anarchist ideology. His belief in a harmonious and classless future society, based on rural communities, was expressed in his lyrical idealizations of the French landscape. But, if in such paintings he played down the contemporary crisis in French agriculture, in his images of the Parisian suburbs and the port of Rouen he tried to come to terms with a modern, industrial society. This book, based on a 1990 touring exhibition organized by the British South Bank Centre, surveys his work in all media.

About the Author, Richard Thomson

Richard Thomson has published extensively on late nineteenth-century art, including books on Toulouse-Latrec, Seurat, and Degas.

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Editorials

Booklist

This thoughtful, beautifully illustrated volume explores the artist’s complex and diverse work.

Chattanooga Times

Informative and entertaining.

Jewish News

This…sumptuously illustrated book…thoroughly reviews Pissarro’s career.
— Morton I. Teicher

Marks

[A] thoughtful, beautifully illustrated volume.
— Mary Romano

The Sunday Times

[An] exceptionally well chosen exhibition.
— Marina Vaizey

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

One of the most independent of the impressionists, Pissarro is a figure rich in paradox. Born in the West Indies to Jewish parents of Danish citizenship, he came from a peripatetic merchant family yet painted timeless, idyllic images of rural France. His family strongly opposed his marriage to his mother's Gentile maid, Julie Vellay. A bohemian, an anarchist, a devotee of homeopathy, he relied on his bourgeois parents for maintenance. He fled Paris amid the bloody putdown of the Paris Commune in 1871, but returned to witness friends tried for anarchist activities and the anti-Semitism unleashed by the Dreyfus Affair. In this attractive, compact catalogue of a British exhibit, art historian Thomson ( Seurat ) interprets Pissarro's images of rural laborers and markets, of Rouen's factory-clogged port, of Paris's industrialized suburbs, of bucolic landscapes as a continual reassessment of the impact of modernization on a transformed world. Some 100 black-and-white reproductions and 26 color plates accompany the text. (July)

Library Journal

This is a companion volume to a 1990 exhibition, touring in Britain, of selected works of the key Impressionist painter Camille Pissarro. Thomson, an art history scholar, has chosen works that exemplify the complexities and tensions in Pissarro's world as it evolved from an agricultural to an industrial society. His artistry is perceived within the context of its salability, the sociopolitical climate, and his own anarchistic ideology. Twenty-six lovely colors and 110 black-and-white plates complement the well-written text, which analyzes specific motifs, namely, Parisian suburbs, the marketplace, rural idylls, and Rouen. Notes, chronology, and catalog supplement this important study. Highly recommended.-- Joan Levin, Indian Trails P.L., Wheeling, Ill.

Booknews

Thomson (history of art, U. of Manchester) assesses Pissarro's relationship not only to Impressionism but also the broader patterns of late-19th century French art, and places his work within the context of contemporary social and political developments and the artist's own ideological commitments. The plates (110 b&w and 26 color) were selected to illuminate these relationships. No index. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)