Camille Pissarro, Apple Harvest, 1888

Dallas Museum of Art, 1955.17.M: https://dma.org/art/collection/object/5305135

Most people think that the Impressionists were all French. Most of them were, of course, and France was certainly the epicentre of all that was new and challenging in the art of the late nineteenth century. But the genial, passionate, and committed father of the group had very un-French origins. Technically a Danish citizen (having been born on the Caribbean island of St Thomas), Camille Pissarro’s origins were Saphardic Jewish and pointed back to a culture and ethos which had thrived before the brutal persecutions of Catholic Spain.

A free-thinker and a socialist (more radical, in fact, than the lot of them), he was also the pioneer of new styles of painting. Always looking and always changing, Pissarro had no artistic baggage whatsoever. His kindly disposition encouraged new talent - from the shy Cezanne to the more self-assured personalities of Gauguin and Seurat. He was even the first to recognize the genius of Vincent van Gogh. But here, we’ll meet Pissarro in his own right.

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