Camille Pissarro,1832-1903, was a Danish-French Painter.

Pissarro’s importance lay in his contribution to Impressionistic and Post-Impressionistic painting. He studied from great forerunner as Camille Corot and Gustave Courbet, and studied and worked alongside with Georges Seurat and Paul Signac when he took on the post-impressionist style. In 1873 he helped establish a collective society of fifteen aspiring artists and became the pivotal figure in holding the group together and encouraging the other members. After coming to Paris in 1855 he came in contact with Corot. He was influenced by Corot who inspired him to paint outdoors, also called plein air painting. He began to understand and appreciate expressing on canvas the beauties of nature without adulteration. He and Corot shared a love of rural scenes, painted from nature. Unlike Corot, who revised his work back in the studio, Pissarro liked to finish his paintings outdoors, often at one sitting, which gave his painting a more realistic feel. He was, therefore, criticised as being vulgar, because he painted what he saw. The works of Constable and Turner confirmed his belief that plein air painting gives the truest depiction of light and atmosphere, which cannot be achieved in the studio. His paintings began to take on a more spontaneous look with loosely blending brushstrokes and areas of impasto, giving more depth to the work. After the end of the Franco-German war, when he returned to France , he found out of 1500 paintings which he had done over 20 years and was forced to leave behind when he left for London, only 40 remained, and the rest had been destroyed by the soldiers. By the end of 1880s Pissarro began to explore new themes and methods of painting, to break out of what he felt was an artistic mire. He went back to painting the life of country people. He painted people at work or at home in realistic settings, without idealising their lives. He also began painting with unified brushwork along with pure strokes of colours. In 1895, he met Georges Seurat and Paul Signa, who painted scientifically, using very small patches of pure colours to create the illusion of blended colours and shadin,when viewed from a distance. Pissarro spent three years on this time consuming technique called pointillism. The paintings that resulted were distinctly different from his Impressionist works, and were considered as exception. Pissarro explained the new art form as a phase in the logical March of Impressionism. But Pissarro eventually turned from from neo-impressionism claiming the system artificial. However, reverting to his earlier style, his work became more subtle, his colour scheme more refined, his drawing more firmer. He approached old age with an increased mastery. In his older age he suffered from recurring eye infection, and was prevented from painting outdoors. So he began painting outdoor scenes while sitting by the windows of hotel rooms, travelling from one place to another in France and London. Art historian John Rewald called Pissarro the dean of the Impressionist painters. Paul Cézanne said , he was a father to me. Auguste Renoir referred to his work as revolutionary, through his artistic portrayal of the common man. He acted as a father figure not to all the Impressionist artists, but to all the four Post-Impressionists, Seurat, Cézanne, Van Gogh and Gauguin.