Camille Pissarro and His Painter Children
Camille Pissarro raised the largest painting dynasty in modern art: five of his sons, Lucien, Georges, Felix, Ludovic-Rodo and Paul-Emile, all became artists, and his descendants are still signing canvases today, seven generations on.
Few families in art history come close. Here is how one patient Impressionist father built it, and what it cost him.
The five painter sons
Lucien (1863-1944), the eldest, settled in England in 1890 and founded the Eragny Press in 1894, printing books he illustrated himself. Georges (1871-1961), who signed as Manzana, worked across painting and design.
Felix (1874-1897), nicknamed Titi, showed real promise and died of tuberculosis at 23. Ludovic-Rodo (1878-1952) became a painter and co-authored the 1939 catalogue raisonne of his father's work. Paul-Emile (1884-1972), the youngest, carried the family style deep into the twentieth century.
The myth about the father
Impressionism's father figure, we are told, was Monet. The record says otherwise: Pissarro was the only painter who showed in all eight Impressionist exhibitions, from 1874 to 1886, and Cezanne, no soft judge, called him "a father to me." The teaching instinct that raised five painter sons also steadied Cezanne and Gauguin.
A home run as a studio school
Pissarro put a pencil in every child's hand and treated the family table as a drawing class. He corrected without crushing, which is rarer than it sounds, and the letters he exchanged with Lucien about how to paint fill volumes that artists still read.
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What the war took
In 1870 the Prussian advance drove the family out of their house at Louveciennes. Soldiers quartered there used his canvases as duckboards and aprons. Of some 1,500 early works, only around forty survived. Everything we call early Pissarro is what the war did not eat.
Loss in the family
His daughter Jeanne, called Minette, died in 1874 at nine. He painted her to the end, and those small portraits are among the most tender things he ever made.
Where to see the family today
The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford holds the Pissarro Family Archive, paintings, prints and thousands of letters, given by Lucien's daughter Orovida. It is the largest Pissarro collection anywhere. At auction, Camille's Boulevard Montmartre, Spring Morning sold for 19.7 million pounds in 2014, a record for him.
Questions about the Pissarro family
How many of Camille Pissarro's children became painters? Five sons, and several daughters drew as well.
Who was the most successful Pissarro son? Lucien, who built a career and a private press in England.
Are there still Pissarro painters today? Yes. Working artists in the family, such as Lelia Pissarro, continue the line.
Where can I see the Pissarro family's work? The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford holds the family archive.
One last fact
Seven generations after Camille first handed his sons a pencil, there are still Pissarros signing canvases, and the family's letters, prints and paintings sit together in Oxford, the longest unbroken painting line in modern art. The full life of the father is in the Camille Pissarro guide.
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