Reid, Martin. Pissarro. London: Studio Editions, 1993.
This is a very colorful monograph on the Impressionist artist Camille Pissarro. The introduction to this book gives a brief history of Pissarro's life.
Out of all the Impressionist artists, Pissarro seems to be the most interesting to me. He is also the easiest for me to relate to because of his personality. Unlike Monet, Degas, Cezanne, or Gauguin who had flaring tempers that erupted without warning; Pissarro was an easygoing, likable person who got along with almost anyone. Another characteristic that I like about Pissarro was his willingness to help any artist whom he came in contact with. Two examples of Pissarro's willingness to help other artists are shown in his support of all eight Impressionist exhibitions and his help to both Cezanne and Gauguin when they were beginning artists.
The book's color plates are arranged in chronological order making it easier for me to see Pissarro's style develop. During the beginning years of his painting career, around 1845 to 1865, he used many dark and unsaturated colors. Many of his paintings were painted with dull browns and olive greens. This may be due to an early imitation of other artists rather than a learned method of painting because unlike many of his Impressionist colleagues, Pissarro had no formal training as a beginning artist. Many of Pissarro's Impressionist friends praised him for this, telling him that he had, 'no bad habits to unlearn.'
During the middle part of his artistic career, around 1870, Pissarro's paintings began to get brighter and bolder. This was a dangerous direction for him to go in for he was already becoming popular at the Salon. He already had many paintings accepted by the Salon in which he said that, 'he owed his training to the great Corot'.
Throughout the later part of his career, Pissarro grew tired of his style and sought new ways to expand on the Impressionist principles he had already established. Forever looking for a scientific discovery to revolutionize art, it is not a surprise that Pissarro would be deeply excited by the direction of the Neo-Impressionist artist Georges Seurat. Introduced to Seurat in 1885 by Paul Signac, Pissarro would become his close friend and supporter. With a breath of fresh air, and a new theory to exercise, Pissarro dove head first into painting after painting. By 1891, after discovering the spontaneity and freedom of his work was lost to the meticulous rendering of the divisionist style, he wrote to his son Lucien, 'I've finished with pointillism'.
My favorite part of Pissarro's career is after his experiments with Neo-Impressionism. After his style of pointillism had faded, he went to the town of Rouen to begin a huge project of painting the effects of weather in cityscapes that would last the remainder of his life. Upon his first visit to Rouen, Pissarro painted twelve pictures. On his second visit, he painted fifteen. In April 1891, he wrote to his son Lucien,
What interests me most of all as a subject is the iron bridge in wet weather thronged with carriages and people on foot, labourers on the quayside, boats, smoke, mist in the distance, very alive and full of movement; the picture's nearly done, I just need a nice little shower of rain to finish it off.
In September, still excited about the city, he wrote to Georges Seurat,
Rouen is marvellous. Here at the hotel, from my window on the second floor, I can see the ships pass by with their great plumes of smoke, black, yellow, white, red .... boats loaded with planks come in, discharge their cargo and are gone again, all in the space of three sessions. To my left is the bridge I painted last year, but from the opposite side, with the quays and houses on the other bank, a whole jumble of houses with grey roofs which are the devil to paint.
One characteristic that I like about Pissarro's paintings is his use of composition. In just about all of his works, apart from his pointillist paintings, he uses strong diagonals to add movement. He also uses lines to lead your eye into and then back and forth across his paintings so nothing is missed or overlooked. To show Pissarro's mastery of composition, below is a diagram of a painting from 1867 entitled The Hermitage at Pontoise.
Image HERE
Pissarro begins by leading your eye from the bottom right corner of the painting to the houses on the middle left side by using the lines of the road. After your eye hits the solid blocks of the houses on the left, it is forced to turn right and continue up the road to the center of the painting where it stops at a second set of houses. From these houses, your eye travels back to the left across the painting, following the horizon line at the top of the canvas.
After examining the pictures and reading the text in this monograph on Pissarro, I now have more respect for his work and for him as a person. I admire him for keeping his energy and motivation in spite of the many hardships he endured during his lifetime. Unlike other artists, such as Gauguin, he stood by and took care of his family through the worst of times and never lost hope. I agree with Cezanne, who spoke the truth when referring to Pissarro as, 'The humble and colossal Pissarro.'