Jacob Abraham Camille Pissarro was a Danish-French Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist painter born on the island of Saint Thomas. His importance resides in his contributions to both Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. Pissarro studied from great forerunners, including Gustave Courbet and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot. He later studied and worked alongside Georges Seurat and Paul Signac when he took on the Neo-Impressionist style at the age of 54.
Paintings by Camille Pissarro
Rue Saint-Honoré in the Afternoon. Effect of Rain (1897)
Rue Saint-Honoré in the Afternoon. Effect of Rain (French: Rue Saint-Honoré, dans l'après-midi. Effet de pluie) is an 1897 oil painting by Camille Pissarro. The work was made towards the end of Pissarro's career, when he abandoned his experiments with Pointillism and returned to a looser Impressionist style. It is part of a series of works that Pissarro made in 1897–98 from a window of the Grand Hôtel du Louvre, looking down across the edge of the Place du Théâtre Français (now the Place André-Malraux) and along the rue Saint-Honoré, portraying the people, carriages and buildings, the trees, fountains and streetlamps, in an early afternoon shower of rain. Other paintings in the series depict a similar scene in morning sunlight, or in the shadows of the evening. The painting measures 81 cm × 65 cm (32 in × 26 in).
The painting has been displayed at the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid since the museum opened in 1992. It had been bought by Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza at the Hahn Gallery in New York in 1976, from an American collector who bought it at the Knoedler Gallery in New York in 1952. In 1993, the baron sold it with the rest of his collection of 775 works to the Spanish state for US$350 million. A claim that the painting was Nazi looted art was dismissed by US federal courts in 2019 and 2020, on the grounds that the law of Spain applied. However, in September 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court accepted certiorari to review that decision, and on 21 April 2022, the Court ruled that the lower courts had incorrectly applied federal common law to apply Spanish law when they should have applied the law of California, and remanded the case for further proceedings. On January 9, 2024, the federal intermediate appellate court ruled in favor of the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza by holding that California would apply its law on conflict of laws in such a way as to defer to the law of Spain.
Hay Harvest at Éragny (1901)
Hay Harvest at Éragny (French: Fenaison à Éragny) is a 1901 painting by French Impressionist painter Camille Pissarro depicting the hay harvest in the French commune of Éragny-sur-Epte.
Steamboats in the Port of Rouen (1896)
Steamboats in the Port of Rouen is a late 19th-century painting by Camille Pissarro. The oil-on-canvas painting depicts shipping in the port city of Rouen, France. Pissarro painted the work from his room in the Hôtel de Paris, which overlooked one of the city's quays. The painting is similar to Pissarro's Morning, An Overcast Day, Rouen, and both works are in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York City.
Pont Boieldieu in Rouen, Rainy Weather (1896)
Pont Boieldieu in Rouen, Rainy Weather is an 1896 painting by Camille Pissarro in the collection of the Art Gallery of Ontario.
It is one of a series of paintings Pissarro did of the Pont Boïeldieu and the industrial quays surrounding it. Pissarro spent time in Rouen in 1896 seeking to paint the industrial modernity of the area. He had earlier made a trip in 1883, and did one series of images of the city then. On this first 1896 trip he stayed at the Hôtel de Paris in Rouen from January to April 1896, during which time this painting was made. His room overlooked the Seine, and it is from this vantage point that it is painted.
Boulevard Montmartre, Mardi Gras (1897)
Boulevard Montmartre, Mardi Gras (Paris, 1897) by Camille Pissarro currently resides in the permanent exhibition at the Armand Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, California. This work is part of a series of fourteen paintings depicting different times of the day and seasons of the Boulevard Montmartre in Paris. Camille Pissarro is known as the "Father of Impression" for his "teacher's eye" of drawing what he saw in front of him.
Pissarro first sketched this idea, before using oil on canvas to paint from his balcony window of the Grand Hôtel de Russie overlooking the grand boulevard. He depicts a nineteenth century Mardi Gras procession, also known as the Carnaval de Paris from the streets below extending its grandeur far into the distance. The Carnaval de Paris also included a parade before the masked ball at the Paris Opera House. This street scene focuses on the idea of a "New Paris" that reveals an outdoor natural setting of beauty without adulteration in order to educate the public of real ideas. This painting marks one of Pissarro's last major works due to his weakening eyesight commonly associated with his elderly age. Many critics believe that this disability formed his appearance of unclear, spontaneous, artistic freedom.
The Banks of the Oise near Pontoise (1873)
The Banks of the Oise near Pontoise is an 1873 oil painting by French artist Camille Pissarro, located in the Indianapolis Museum of Art, which is in Indianapolis, Indiana. It depicts the river Oise near the market town of Pontoise.
Painted in the early days of Impressionism, this rural landscape uses gently luminous colors and loose brushwork to capture the atmospheric conditions of a silvery-grey, overcast day. While the surface texture is sensuous, the firm compositional network, Pissarro's hallmark, locks the road, river, field, and sky together tightly. Encroaching on the French landscape are clear signs of industrialization: factory, smokestack, railroad, and barge.
Côte des Bœufs at L'Hermitage (1877)
Côte des Bœufs at L'Hermitage is an oil-on-canvas landscape painting by the French Impressionist artist Camille Pissarro. It was painted in 1877, and displayed the same year at an exhibition now generally referred to as the third Impressionist exhibition. The picture is large by Pissarro's measure, and he described the effort of painting it as the 'work of a benedictine'. Pissarro was proud of the painting, and it remained in his family's possession until 1913. It presently hangs in the National Gallery, London.
In 1872 Pissarro moved for the second time to the commune of Pontoise some twenty miles north-west of Paris, where he lived with his family until 1884. The rolling hills of the close by neighbourhood of L'Hermitage provided the setting for a large number of Pissarro's paintings during his stays at Pontoise.
The House of the Deaf Woman and the Belfry at Eragny (1886)
The House of the Deaf Woman and the Belfry at Eragny is an 1886 oil painting by French artist Camille Pissarro, located in the Indianapolis Museum of Art, which is in Indianapolis, Indiana. It is a view of Pissarro's neighbor's yard in Eragny, created during his brief period of experimentation with pointillism.
This painting depicts Pissarro's neighbor's yard, with her brick house and the steeple of the parish church rising behind it. It is one of Pissarro's best pointillist images, with the most consistent brushwork and a fine grasp of the color theory of Neo-Impressionism. Deep green, violet, and blue in the shadows contrast with dots of rose, orange, and yellow to recreate the brilliant summer sun. Pissarro's great-grandson Joachim Pissarro, an art historian, declared that in this painting he "manages to blend his abiding respect for the new technical rules with a sense of freedom and spontaneity. The pulverizing chromatic effect of this new technique is extraordinary light, dazzling colors ... a brilliant energy that seems to radiate from the canvas." The frame is a reproduction of the original, balancing Pissarro's preference for white with his dealer's insistence upon gold.
The Little Factory (1868)
The Little Factory (French: La Petite Fabrique) is an oil painting on canvas by the French artist Camille Pissarro, from c. 1862–1865.
The small work is thought to have been painted between 1862 and 1865. It was presented to the Strasbourg museum by the Société des amis des musées de la ville de Strasbourg (today called the Société des amis des arts et des musées de Strasbourg, or SAAMS) in 1924 and is now in the Musée d'Art moderne et contemporain. Its inventory number is 55.974.0.684.
The Harvest, Pontoise (1881)
The Harvest, Pontoise is a late 19th-century painting by Dano-French artist Camille Pissarro. Done in oil on canvas, the work depicts a group of French farmers gathering potatoes; such subject material was a common theme used by Pissarro. The painting is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Shepherdess Bringing in Sheep (1886)
Shepherdess Bringing in the Sheep (French: La Bergère Rentrant des Moutons) is a painting by Camille Pissarro from 1886.
Looted by the Nazis from Raoul Meyer during the German occupation of France, the Pissarro painting was the object of a restitution claim by Raoul Meyer after the war against the art dealer Christoph Bernoulli and again decades later by his daughter, Léone-Noëlle Meyer, against the Fred Jones Jr. Museum at the University of Oklahoma. The museum fought the claim. A settlement was reached in 2016 which involved the circulation of the Pissarro between the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art and the Musée d'Orsay. The settlement was later called into question and the case landed back in court. On 1 June 2021, after years of litigation, Meyer abandoned ownership of the Pissarro painting to the Fred Jones Jr. Museum.
Morning, An Overcast Day, Rouen (1896)
Morning, An Overcast Day, Rouen is a late 19th-century painting by Danish-French artist Camille Pissarro. Done in oil on canvas, the work depicts the industrial cityscape of Rouen, France. The centerpiece of the painting is Boieldieu Bridge, a steel arch bridge which Pissarro painted from his room in a nearby hotel. The painting is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Pissarro had executed other paintings of the Boieldieu Bridge, in differing weather conditions, on a previous visit to Rouen earlier that year (1896).