How the avant-garde pioneer captured the quotidian
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Camille Pissarro, as Walter Sickert observed in 1923, “remains the painter for those who look at, rather than for those who read about, painting.” Renowned for his pastoral scenes, Parisian townscapes, harbour views and empathetic depictions of the rural laborers — often executed in a series — Pissarro was a versatile and innovative artist. The senior impressionist employed a bold palette, captured the fleeting effects of light and atmosphere, and reimagined pictorial space in his prolific output. “The Honest Eye: Camille Pissarro’s Impressionism” at the Museum Barberini offers a broad overview of this under-celebrated master, presenting some 80 landscapes, cityscapes, still lifes and figure paintings drawn from 50 international collections. Organized jointly with the Denver Art Museum, where it opens in October, the exhibition traces Pissarro’s artistic life from his youth in the Caribbean to his time in Paris and later years in northern France. Ten years older than Claude Monet, Pissarro was the mentoring father figure of the young group of avant-garde impressionists, admired for his wisdom and warmhearted temperament. He was a true architect of the movement, instrumental in organizing the first impressionist exhibition in 1874 and was notably the only artist among his cohort to participate in all eight shows. A steadfast and independent thinker, he eschewed the era’s focus on elegant middle-class subjects in favor of working-class depictions and readily experimented with styles and techniques. One highlight, “Hoarfrost, Peasant Girl Making a Fire” (1888), from the museum’s Hasso Plattner Collection, exemplifies Pissarro’s engagement with Georges Seurat’s pointillist method. Rendered in the meticulous dots characteristic of the neo-impressionist style, the scene portrays two children warming themselves by a brushwood fire, the smoke’s white plume billowing across the composition.
Camille Pissarro, “Hoarfrost, Peasant Girl Making a Fire,” 1888. Hasso Plattner Collection
