Camille Pissarro: 12 works

'Pissarro participated in the first independent exhibition of the Impressionists in 1874 and remained the most loyal member of the group, contributing to all the subsequent exhibitions. Although Pissarro specialized in landscapes, he also painted genre scenes, portraits, and still lifes.'

'Painting in the open air alongside Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Pissarro followed a new practice of breaking up surfaces with loosely placed brushstrokes.'

'Pissarro, like his Impressionist colleagues, was fascinated by the play of light across water. In this work, he uses lively white impasto touches to suggest shimmering reflections.'

'Camille Pissarro's landscape shows the road to the town of Saint-Germain-en-Laye from Louveciennes, a village west of Paris. Many of Pissarro's landscapes of the early 1870s show the roads into and out of Louveciennes.'

'The balanced composition and cool harmony of blues, greens, and creamy yellow give this river view a serene stability typical of the work of Pissarro, a leader in the group and an important mentor to Cézanne and Gauguin.'

'Pissarro didn't care much for industrialisation. He did not see the future of mankind in factories, but rather on the countryside.'

'This work was created near the end of Pissarro's second residence in Pontoise, and it was exhibited in the 7th Impressionist exhibition. Several of Pissarro's characteristic features of this period are apparent in this work.'

'In 1882 Pissarro and his family moved from Pontoise to a nearby village called Osny.'

'Between 1884 and 1888 Pissarro experimented with the pointillist method of the younger Seurat. For an avowed anarchist it was perhaps no great step, but in art-historical terms Pissarro's stylistic shift, however momentary, coincided with the end of impressionism's avant-garde ascendancy.'

'Between 10 February and 17 April 1897, Pissarro painted fourteen views of the boulevard Montmartre as seen from the window of his hotel room, and two further canvases from the same vantage point, looking to the right to the Boulevard des Italiens.'

'From the window of his hotel room he repeatedly painted the crowd flowing across the broad span of the Pont-Neuf. The massive block of the bridge and the houses on the embankment, which he breaks up with the patches of small brushstrokes, enlivens in the fleeting vibration of the light effects.'

'Painted in Le Havre, these are two of the final artworks executed by Camille Pissarro (1830--1903), a few months prior to his death.'