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CAMILLE (Jacob-Abraham-Camille) PISSARRO
St. Thomas, Danish West Indies 1830 - Paris 1903

Camille Pissarro, painter and printmaker, was one of the core members of the French Impressionism movement. He experimented with many styles, including a period when he adopted Georges Seurat’s “pointillist” approach. A supportive friend and mentor to influential artists such as Paul Cézanne and Paul Gauguin, he was described by many who knew him as “Father Pissarro.” Influenced initially by members of the Barbizon School of landscape painting such as Camille Corot, Charles-Francois Daubigny, Jean-Francois Millet as well as Gustave Courbet (1819-77), he borrowed widely from his contemporaries. Committed to plein-air painting, he ranks with Claude Monet and Alfred Sisley as one of the best landscape artists of the late 19th century. In addition to pure Impressionism, he explored a number of differing styles, including Realism as well as Neo-Impressionism, and painted a wide variety of subjects across most of the painting genres, including landscapes, cityscapes, portraits, still lives, and peasant scenes. Unlike the other Impressionists, Pissarro devoted his entire life to engraving. Where Degas engraved 65 plates, Renoir two score, Cézanne only three, Guillaumin and Sisley but a few more, Pissarro did at least one hundred and ninety etched and lithographed plates, without counting numerous monotypes. The artist engraved to please himself, indifferent to the possible commercial value of this side of his art. His prints are real painter's etchings done for the artist's own satisfaction, generally printed by himself