Camille Pissarro2023
by Anka Muhlstein, Adriana Hunter
A Best Book of 2023 by The New Yorker
From the acclaimed biographer and author of Balzac’s Omelette, an engaging new work on the life of “the father of Impressionism” and the role his Jewish background played in his artistic creativity.
The celebrated painter Camille Pissarro (1830–1903) occupied a central place in the artistic scene of his time: a founding member of the new school of French painting, he was a close friend of Monet, a longtime associate in Degas’s and Mary Cassatt’s experimental work, a support to Cézanne and Gauguin, and a comfort to Van Gogh, and was backed by the great Parisian art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel throughout his career. Nevertheless, he felt a persistent sense of being set apart, different, and hard to classify. Settled in France from the age of twenty-five...