Pissarro, Camille in The Books Store

Camille Pissarro (1830-1903) was the only member of the Impressionist group to exhibit in all eight of their exhibitions held in Paris between 1874 and 1886. He drafted the Impressionist convention and was the principal organizer of the first exhibition held in 1874. He was a bold and restless experimenter throughout his career, working in a variety of mediums and techniques, including painting, drawing, and printmaking.  Pissarro was also regarded as an astute judge of young talent. Cézanne and Gauguin both acknowledged their profound debt to him, and Seurat, Signac and Matisse also benefited from Pissarro's generous encouragement and advice at the start of their careers.

This beautiful book is the first to examine closely Pissarro’s innovative role in the Impressionist movement and his novel approach to pictorial composition. With 150 stunning color illustrations of many of Pissarro’s greatest works, this comprehensive and accessible book includes five essays written by distinguished scholars that analyze the artist’s exploration of composition and subject matter, his experiments with color and space, and his turn to Neo-Impressionism toward the end of his career. Camille Pissarro also describes his relationships to other contemporary artists, his reception by critics at the time, and his significant influence upon Impressionism and modern art.

This lavishly illustrated publucation illuminates Camille Pissarro's remarkable transformation from a Barbizon-style landscape painter to one of the leaders of the emerging Impressionist movement. This is the first major examination of the revolutionary landscape paintings Pissarro created between 1864 and 1874. During this pivotal decade in the artist's career, Pissarro produced his most beautiful and innovative canvases and his experimental techniques and vision laid the groundwork for an entire generation of painters. This publication brings together approximately 50 of these exquisite paintings, from key works included in the Salon exhibitions of the 1860s to a powerful selection of landscapes seen in the first Impressionist show of 1874.  Many of these paintings are drawn from major museums around the world and rarely shown private collections.
 
Along with full-color reproductions and in-depth catalogue entries on the paintings are essays on the development of Pissarro's painting style from 1864 to 1874, and on the influence of place in his work--acknowledging his formative years in St. Thomas and Venezuela as well as his fascination with the countryside surrounding Paris. Technical studies of several of the artist's paintings from the 1860s reveal new insights into the artist's creative process.  This volume accompanies an exhibition organized by The Baltimore Museum of Art. It will travel to the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art in Tennessee and the Milwaukee Museum of Art in 2007.