Collection: Art prints by Camille Pissarro

Camille Pissarro was a French painter and is considered one of the founding fathers and central figures of Impressionism - an artist whose significance for the movement extended far beyond his own painterly work and who played a role as a teacher, mediator and moral authority that can hardly be overestimated in the history of 19th century art. He was born in Charlotte Amalie on the Danish island colony of St. Thomas in 1830, grew up in a Sephardic-Jewish merchant family and only came to Paris as a young man, where he decided against his family's wishes to take up painting and began studying at the École des Beaux-Arts and the Académie Suisse. There he met Claude Monet early on, with whom he formed a lifelong artistic friendship.

Pissarro developed a strong interest in the direct observation of nature and open-air painting at an early age. The landscape of the Île-de-France, the villages and fields around Pontoise and later Éragny-sur-Epte, became his most important motifs - not the dramatic or sublime nature, but the everyday, working landscape with its farmers, markets and rural paths. This turn to simple, unspectacular country life sets Pissarro apart from many Impressionists and gives his work a social dimension and a down-to-earth warmth that makes it unmistakable. He was the only painter to take part in all eight Impressionist group exhibitions between 1874 and 1886 - a testament to his unconditional loyalty to the movement and his role as its most reliable anchor.

From the 1880s onwards, Pissarro went through a phase of intense artistic searching. Fascinated by Georges Seurat's theory of pointillism, he adopted his method of dabs of color more consistently than any of the older Impressionists and experimented with this more systematic painting technique for several years before returning to a freer, more personal mode of expression. This willingness to renew and experiment, even at an advanced age, is characteristic of Pissarro's artistic attitude: throughout his life he remained curious, open and unwavering in his pursuit of a painting that was committed to the truth of nature and the moment. His late city views of Paris, Rouen and Dieppe in particular, which he often painted from hotel windows as eye problems forced him to avoid the outdoors, are among the most impressive achievements of his late work.

In addition to his work as a painter, Pissarro was an exceptionally generous and respected figure in French artistic life. He taught and encouraged younger artists with an openness and selflessness that was unparalleled among his contemporaries: Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin and Paul Signac were among those who sought his advice and benefited from his experience and humanity. Cézanne called him his most important teacher throughout his life. Camille Pissarro died in Paris in 1903. Today, he is considered an indispensable figure in the history of 19th century art, whose works are represented in the world's most important museums and whose role as a teacher, mediator and tireless innovator of painting secures his place in the history of Impressionism just as much as his own rich painterly oeuvre.