Camille Pissarro

Camille Pissarro is one of the greatest masters of the French Impressionist and Neo Impressionist movements in the nineteenth century. His paintings are celebrated for the sensation of air, light and transparency they generate through his careful scientific colour analysis.

In the late 1860s, Pissarro, Monet and Renoir moved to Louveciennes and became fascinated by the possibilities of en plein air painting. However, the development of Impressionism was interrupted by the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war in July 1870.

After being impressed by the work of British artist J.M.W Turner, Pissarro confirmed that he and Monet were right in their en plein air pursuit of light and atmosphere. They were particularly impressed by Turner’s depiction of snow and fog, realising that such dazzling effect was not created by a solid mass of white, but by diverse colours jostling side-by side.

From the late 1870s the period of late Impressionism, Pissarro worked to broaden his practice. Unlike Monet, he did not explore atmospheric variations but he did vary his subjects. He was constantly questioning and developing his technique in relation to his evolving artistic theories. After meeting George Seurat (inventor of the pointillist technique) in 1885, Pissarro began to radically modify his approach to painting in line with this new movement, which he saw as the next logical advancement of Impressionism.

In 1884, Pissarro and his family moved to the French village of Éragny. Inspired by the beauty of his surrounds, Pissarro began to develop his largest and most significant body of landscape paintings. His finest example from this period is Prairie à Éragny, 1886 which reveals a freshness and vitality in both his use of colour and brushwork. Prairie à Éragny, is a superb example of an Impressionist painting, created at the height of the movement. The palette of warm pinks and mauves, vivid greens and bright powder blues is iconic, depicting the landscape through colour juxtapositions, which was applied directly to the canvas in short brush strokes.

Prairie à Éragny’s shimmering luminosity (perceived brightness) is attributed to Pissarro’s adaption of the emerging Neo-Impressionist technique whereby dots of pure colour, one next to the other in specific contrast, combine optically (at an appropriate distance) to achieve maximum luminosity.