Camille Pissarro

b. 1830 and died 1903

Camille Pissarro was a French Impressionist painter often credited with being one of the fathers of Impressionism. Pissarro was born on what is now St. Thomas, Virgin Islands to a Portuguese Sephardic Jewish family.

From an early age, Pissarro flirted with very extreme political ideas including anarchy. This probably led to his sympathetic view of laborers and paysans. His earliest still extant works (many were destroyed in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71) were broadly painted and greatly influenced by Gustave Courbet.

Pissarro was extremely influential within the Impressionist movement, having exhibited at all 8 Impressionist exhibits, remaining friends and confidantes with the often difficult personalities of Degas, Cezanne and Gauguin, and most importantly laying the intellectual groundwork underpinning Impressionist theory and technique.