Camille Pissarro, Family and Friends:
Masterworks from the Ashmolean Museum

The renowned Post-Impressionist artist Paul Cezanne once praised Camille Pissarro (1830-1903) as ‘the first Impressionist painter.’ A central figure in the formation of this art movement, Pissarro was the only artist to show in all eight of the formative Impressionist exhibitions held between 1874 and 1886, striving consistently to uphold its ideals and practices. As Cezanne admitted, that ‘humble and colossal’ Pissarro was a founder of Impressionism and one of its most faithful representatives in many ways. Pissarro’s career in art spanned the Barbizon school to Impressionism, representing many of the main trends in modern painting of the nineteenth century. Not only is he mentioned together with such Impressionist masters as Monet and Degas, he was also revered by many other young mentors and friends who would later go on to fame. Such artists as Cezanne, Gauguin, Van Gogh, and even the young Matisse all came under his guidance or influence at one time or another.
The works on exhibit in Camille Pissarro, Family and Friends come from the collection of the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology at the University of Oxford in England. The Ashmolean Museum is home to the most complete set of drawings and watercolours by Pissarro in the world. This exhibit focuses on Pissarro’s oil paintings, drawings, prints, and letters, but it also includes works by three of his painter-sons--Lucien, Felix, and Ludovic-Rodolphe--and by his granddaughter Orovida. To put Camille Pissarro’s achievements and influence in the wider perspective of nineteenth-century French art, representative works by Barbizon painters and Pissarro’s fellow Impressionists have also been selected for exhibit. Always with an open mind, Pissarro in more than forty years as an artist also absorbed ideas and techniques of other artists, adding his own innovations that led to several shifts in style over his career. This special exhibition is divided into three main themes--“Pissarro and Landscape,” “Pissarro and Rural Life,” and “The Pissarro Family,” presenting an overview of major developments in the life and art of the Impressionist patriarch Camille Pissarro.