Celebrity Graveland

July 10, 1830 – November 13, 1903

The (arguably literal) father of French Impressionism, Camille Pissarro convened, nurtured and pushed the collective that defined one of the most famous movements in modern art history. Born on the island of St. Thomas in the Danish West Indies, Pissarro learned painting from local masters and initially concentrated on the lives and culture of the Caribbean people. He attended boarding school in France and – after spending some time in South America – returned to Paris at the age of 25 to embark on a career as an artist.

His focus on natural settings and rural life remained throughout his career. While he continued his studies at the Académie Suisse and the Académie des Beaux-Arts, Pissarro met fellow artists like Claude Monet and Paul Cézanne. They shared frustration with the strict rules that surrounded the official Salon in Paris. Together, the artists explored themes and techniques that allowed them to express themselves in new, unconventional ways.

After some time in London where he married and started a family (6 of his children also became artists…including his son Lucien), Pissarro returned to France and got the band back together. New friendships with the likes of Renoir, Manet and Degas led to a new way for all of them to fully embrace their individual styles. Impressionism was born and the establishment hated it.

Despite being the father figure of the movement, Pissarro was never one to sit still. He soon spearheaded a move to POST-Impressionism and eventually (after meeting Georges Seurat and Paul Siganc) embraced the more technical Pointillism movement. NEO-Impressionism followed and soon, he left that behind as well. Pissarro was always moving forward; always dragging the tide with him.

Never finished with altering the very landscape of European painting, in his later years, he briefly mentored a young Dutch painter by the name of Van Gogh. Pissarro’s legacy is the very core of nearly a century of art.

He died of sepsis in Paris at the age of 73.

Burial

Père Lachaise Cemetery – Paris, FRANCE

Specific Location

Division 7; From the office, head into Division 7 and stay to the right (east). The PISSARRO plot will be 2 rows deep on your left almost at the end of this path.

This entry was posted on March 11, 2024 at 9:29 am and is filed under Père Lachaise Cemetery with tags Painters, Père Lachaise Cemetery. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.