It is the simple life that fascinates Camille Pissarro (1830-1903). The work of the peasants and farm workers. Pissarro, one of the most important artists in 19th century France, spent most of his life with his family in small villages outside Paris. There he was able to watch the women in the fields harvesting hay and immortalize them in works such as “The Gleaners”.
Pissarro’s art differs significantly from the subjects of Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir or Edgar Degas. In Paris, the Danish citizen with Jewish roots, who was born in the Caribbean, remained an outsider throughout his life. As an autodidact, he trained as an artist with the support of the Danish painter Fritz Melbye, but he declined academic training. Today, Pissarro, with his then new style of painting, is considered a pioneer of impressionism. His authentic pictures and compositions, which atmospherically capture moments and impressions of nature, are not popular; at the time they were considered primitive by affluent customers.
Camille Pissarro is one of the most important artists from 19th century France. He has inspired many painters like Paul Cézanne, himself he remained poor all his life. The photo, taken around 1874, shows Pissaro on a bench in the garden of his house in Pontoise.
Image: Archives Musée Camille-Pissarro, Pontoise
His favorite subject: the simple rural population. In the picture the oil painting “Femme au fichu vert” (woman with a green headscarf) from 1893.
Image: RMN-Grand Palais (musée d’Orsay) / Franck Raux
Pictures like the “Les Glaneuses” (The Gleaners) from 1889 did not reach the public. But financial success was not so important to the artist.
Image: Kunstmuseum Basel / Jonas Haenggi
Despite agonizing self-doubts, financial success is not so important to him. “Painting and art in general fascinate me, this is my life, what else is important; if you do something with all your heart and with everything that is noble, you will always find a like-minded person understands, very few are enough – it’s not what an artist should want! “he wrote in a letter dated November 20, 1883 to his eldest son Lucien.
This uncompromising attitude and his artistic curiosity also made Pissarro an important source of ideas for many artists of his time. His friends include Mary Cassatt, Paul Cézanne, Claude Monet and Georges Seurat. He even motivates the art dealer and stock trader Paul Gauguin to become a painter himself. The exhibition at the Kunstmuseum Basel, which can be seen until January 23, 2022, shows works by Pissarro and relates them to the works of his contemporaries. The comparison reveals the influence Pissarro had on his mostly younger artist friends.
Many works by Pissarro were destroyed during the Franco-Prussian War, some of which Pissarro painted before 1870 can be seen in Basel. At the end of his artistic career, Pissarro paints city and port views, from a hotel room in Le Havre right by the sea and most recently in Paris, when he was suffering from a chronic inflammatory eye disease. There are always the same motifs at different times of the day and night. With light and shadow.