Pissarro: Father of Impressionism – a fitting tribute to a quiet trailblazer

Ashmolean Museum show brings together 80 works by the painter

Camille Pissarro, Farm at Montfoucault in snow, 1874–1876
Camille Pissarro, Farm at Montfoucault in snow, 1874–1876

When you think of impressionism, Camille Pissarro might not be the first painter who springs to mind, said Rachel Campbell-Johnston in The Times. Born in 1830, Pissarro was significantly older than Monet, Renoir or Cézanne – all artists whose posthumous reputations eclipse his own. And though he did sometimes depict the “sun-dappled landscapes” associated with impressionism, he was just as often “a painter of rain, snow and frost”.

Yet as this new exhibition at the Ashmolean reminds us, in his lifetime Pissarro was seen as a pioneer of this “most popular of modern-art movements”, a trailblazer who mentored and inspired the likes of Monet, Gauguin, Sisley and Degas.

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