Camille Pissarro

Happy Birthday Camille Pissarro!! Born today in 1831 in St. Thomas in the West Indies, Pissarro was a clerk in his father’s general store before running way with another painter to Venezuela and then to Paris in 1855. His timely arrival enabled him to see the famed World Fair exhibition in which Courbet showed his rejected paintings. (these paintings were rejected by the Salon, the controlling entity of fine art at the time) He was deeply affected by the attitude and the work and began painting in earnest, first under Corot, then falling in with the Impressionists, including Courbet, Manet, and Monet. He was forced to flee before the German invasion in 1870 and ended up in Pontoise. The paintings he left behind were destroyed. Pissarro exhibited in the first Impressionist show in 1874 and is said to be the most consistent Impressionist painter, never veering from the style. He has paintings in most major museums. The one below, Hoarfrost, 1873, is at the Musee d’Orsay in Paris.