Camille Pissarro (1830-1903) is the unknown Impressionist. Despite his roles in as mentor and friend to Monet, Cézanne, Seurat, SIgnac, Cassatt, Degas and others, as well as his participation in all eight Impressionist exhibitions from 1874 to 1886, he remains, somehow, peripheral. A new show jointly produced by San Francisco’s Fine Art Museum and the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute seeks to redress this situation by focusing, not on the landscapes for which Pissarro is best known, and deservedly, but little-known figurative works, portraits of his children, which until recently remained in the family, and depictions of servants and peasants that the artist enlisted or paid to model for him. In the show’s catalogue essay, Richard R. Brettell emphasizes the artist’s worldview, democratic and egalitarian, formed in his multiracial childhood and informed by his later readings of the anarchist utopians Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Peter Kropotkin. and Mikhail Bakunin. Political (or apolitical) conviction seemed absent from Pissarro’s work until now—restrained to the sly clues of little red books planted in certain portraits, Brettell theorizes—but there is a surprise in this show—a kind of bombshell, even. More on this later, but first some background information, and an apology to francophiles who will note occasional missing accent marks: désolé....
Born in the Danish West Indies island of St. Thomas (now the US Virgin Islands) to a Portuguese-Jewish mercantile family, Pissarro attended a Moravian primary school with the local Afro-Caribbean children, instead of a school for European children. This is probably the result of a scandal: PIssarro’s Jewish father, after the death of his employer (and uncle), became romantically involved with and later married the Creole Catholic widow, his aunt by marriage. His early education thus imbued Pissarro with a lifelong sympathy for the working class that also crossed color lines.
An early painting made in St. Thomas, Two Women Chatting by the Sea (1856), betrays no hint of the colonialist racism or class condescension that other artists might have included at the time; the subjects are equals, not colorful, amusing, inferior subject matter.
A painting made later in France shows a hint of social commentary, with a prosperous family’s leisure fun silently observed by poor children.
After working in Caracas for two years with a slightly older artist friend, Fritz Melbye, Pissarro accepted a position with Melbye’s brother, Anton, in Paris, in 1855. Lodging with relatives in nearby suburban Passy, Pissarro sampled and rejected academic art training in Paris, gravitating toward a new vision of art based on contemporary life. Gustave Courbet’s unstinting realism, Jean-Francois Millet’s depictions of timeless farmworkers, and the Camille Corot’s poetic plein-air landscape painting were formative influences. Pissarro, on his philosophy and method: ”Work at the same time upon sky, water, branches, ground, keeping everything going on and equal basis and unceasingly rework until you have got it. Paint generously and unhesitatingly, for it is best not to lose the first impression.” His teacher, Corot, who finished his paintings in the studio according to standard contemporary practice, disagreed with Pissarro’s warts-and-all realism, his one-session approach, and lack of polish. Others, however, shared his vision.
From Wikipedia: "In 1859, ... Pissarro became friends with a number of younger artists who likewise chose to paint in the more realistic style. Among them were Claude Monet, Armand Guillaumin and Paul Cézanne. What they shared in common was their dissatisfaction with the dictates of the Salon. Cézanne’s work had been mocked ... by the others in the school, and, writes Rewald, in his later years, Cézanne "never forgot the sympathy and understanding with which Pissarro encouraged him." As a part of the group, Pissarro was comforted from knowing he was not alone, and that others similarly struggled with their art. Pissarro agreed with the group about the importance of portraying individuals in natural settings, and expressed his dislike of any artifice or grandeur in his works, despite what the Salon demanded for its exhibits. In 1863, almost all of the group’s paintings were rejected by the Salon, and French Emperor Napoleon III instead decided to place their paintings in a separate exhibit hall, the Salon des Refusés. However, only works of Pissarro and Cézanne were included, and the separate exhibit brought a hostile response from both the officials of the Salon and the public."
Perceptive critics, however, responded to the works, despite their having been “skyed,” deliberately hung high above eye level. Emile Zola, the novelist, critic, and boyhood friend of Cézanne, who would later challenge the French government in the Dreyfus affair, enthused: ”Camille Pissarro is one of the three or four true painters of this day . . . I have rarely encountered a technique that is so sure.” Pissarro’s rhapsody on the Japanese prints, aesthetic catnip to so many of his generation, might well apply to his landscapes: “...nothing that leaps to the eye, [but] a calm, a grandeur, an extraordinary unity, a rather subdued radiance.” Pissarro found further inspiration for his subjective working methods and objective subject matter during his stay in England during the Franco-Prussian War (for which he tried to enlist, unsuccessfully). There, across the Channel, he found encouragement in the works of Constable and Turner, and in his friendship with Claude Monet, anther artist at the Durand-Ruel Galley, who had also moved there for refuge.
Wikipedia: "When Pissarro returned to his home in France after the war, he discovered that of the 1,500 paintings he had done over 20 years, which he was forced to leave behind when he moved to London, only 40 remained. The rest had been damaged or destroyed by the soldiers, who often used them as floor mats outside in the mud to keep their boots clean... He soon re-established his friendships with the other Impressionist artists of his earlier group, including Cézanne, Monet, Manet, Renoir, and Degas. Pissarro now expressed his opinion to the group that he wanted an alternative to the Salon so their group could display their own unique styles. To assist in that endeavor, in 1873 he helped establish a separate collective, called the "Société Anonyme des Artistes, Peintres, Sculpteurs et Graveurs," which included fifteen artists. Pissarro created the group’s first charter and became the “pivotal” figure in establishing and holding the group together. One writer noted that with his prematurely gray beard, the forty-three year old Pissarro was regarded as a “wise elder and father figure” by the group. Yet he was able to work alongside the other artists on equal terms due to his youthful temperament and creativity. Another writer said of him that “he has unchanging spiritual youth and the look of an ancestor who remained a young man.
"In 1874, the group held their first 'Impressionist' Exhibition, which shocked and “horrified” the critics, who primarily appreciated only scenes portraying religious, historical, or mythological settings. They found fault with the Impressionist paintings on many grounds:
—The subject matter was considered “vulgar” and “commonplace,” with scenes of street people going about their everyday lives. Pissarro’s paintings, for instance, showed scenes of muddy, dirty, and unkempt settings;
—The manner of painting was too sketchy and looked incomplete, especially compared to the traditional styles of the period. The use of visible and expressive brushwork by all the artists was considered an insult to the craft of traditional artists, who often spent weeks on their work. Here, the paintings were often done in one sitting and the paints were applied wet-on-wet;
—The use of color by the Impressionists relied on new theories they developed, such as having shadows painted with the reflected light of surrounding, and often unseen, objects."
The Impressionist rebels triumphed, of course. Pissarro’s role, though generally underestimated nowadays, was always acknowledged by his peers and colleagues. Armand Silvestre, a poet and critic, considered him “basically the inventor of this [Impressionist] painting.” Cézanne, who painted with “the first Impressionist” in Pontoise, dubbed him “a father to me. A man to consult and a little like the good Lord,” and generously claimed to be, in 1906, two years after the older artist’s death and just before his own, “the pupil of Pissarro.” Mary Cassatt mused that ”the gentle Camille Pissarro” “could have taught the stones to draw correctly.” One of his students, his son Lucien, who became an artist (as did all but one of his siblings), described him as a “splendid teacher, never imposing his personality on his pupil.” Even Paul Gauguin, never troubled by self-doubt, proclaimed his debt: ”If we observe the totality of Pissarro’s work, we find there, despite fluctuations, not only an extreme artistic will, never belied, but also an essentially intuitive, purebred art . . . He was one of my masters and I do not deny him.” The nickname of Père Pissarro, father Pissarro, was generally accorded as a mark of respect for his artistic integrity, even after he left the movement for four years to explore Neo-Impressionist divisionism with Seurat and Signac. (He abandoned it eventually as artificial and alien to his temperament: ”It was impossible to be true to my sensations and consequently to render life and movement, impossible to be faithful to the effects, so random and so admirable, of nature, impossible to give an individual character to my drawing...”)
Pissarro’s People comprises nearly a hundred pieces, including thirty-seven paintings and numerous drawings, pastels and gouaches on paper. The show emphasizes Pissarro’s triple aspects as family man, realist and democratic (small d) anarchist. Intimate portraits of family members, friends, servants, and neighbors, observed and set down with freshness and immediacy, are interspersed with scenes of rural marketplaces in Pontoise and Gisors and scenes of farm life, which Brettell sees as depictions of an anarchist paradise, with young, well-fed, attractive workers engaged in reasonably pleasant-seeming tasks. He contrasts this Arcadian vision with the “fatalist” depictions of “backbreaking premodern work” by Millet’s agriculturalists,” their features generic and animal-like.” That’s a serious mischaracterization of Millet, who sought to ennoble agricultural life; Van Gogh and Tolstoy, despite their mystic utopian tendencies, were no fools, and they were wholehearted Millet supporters. However praiseworthy Pissarro’s intentions, his pointillist works are, to my eye, awkward and unconvincing, their motley skins at odds with the artist’s fundamental realism. Instead of noble workers we get “staffage figures,” i.e., human prop. Furthermore, Pissarro;s vision of social harmony is somewhat generic, and could just as well feature Aryan Germans, midwestern German-Americans, or Russian collective farmers. Pissarro’s laborious divisionism is compared repeatedly to honest agricultural work, but these well-intended visions of well-tended fields look methodical and mechanical; no wonder Pissarro gave up divisionism up with relief.
His anarchist convictions did, however, find a visual outlet once, although ithey had to be kept secret in France’s nationalistic, anti-semitic, political culture. In 1889 Pissarro made a book of twenty-eight small drawings attacking modern capitalism’s abuses. Entitled Turpitudes Sociales, social disgraces, or social crimes, this unique book, bound between covers designed by son Lucien, was strictly a family affair, meant only for the eyes and edification of two nieces living in England, Esther and Alice Isaacson, and consequently hand-delivered, since such incendiary work was too dangerous for the mail. A facsimile is exhibited here, along with copies of La Feuille, an anarchist newspaper, featuring powerful drawings by Théophile Alexandre Steinlen and others. Pissarro’s drawings for Turpitudes Sociales, by comparison, are rough and unpolished, but, like Philip Guston’s Poor Richard, a century later, seething with outrage. A sample of the text which Pissarro clipped from La Révolte, another anarchist newspaper, reads: “It is the War of the dispossessed against their dispossessors, the war of the hungry against the fat, the poor against the rich, the war of life against death.” If the rhetoric sounds unpleasantly familiar to that of the recent Occupy Wall Street movement or various peasant revolts over the past five centuries, it should remind us to take nothing for granted. Esther Isaacson’s overly optimistic commentary of a century ago ends Bretell’s catalogue essay: “No doubt in the year 2000, ... they will look back at these drawings and wonder how people in the nineteenth century could be so stupid as to let themselves be troubled by such problems.” Artsy dreamers....!
Through January 22. Legionofhonor.famsf.org/legion/exhibitions/pissarros-people
