Camille Pissarro

Camille Pissarro (1830–1903) was born at Charlotte Amalie on Saint Thomas, then in the Danish West Indies, and schooled near Paris. The Danish painter Fritz Melbye persuaded him to paint full-time, and the two worked together in Caracas and La Guaira before Pissarro settled in France in 1855. There Corot tutored him and inspired him to paint out of doors. The oldest of the Impressionists, he was the only artist to show at all eight of their Paris exhibitions, from 1874 to 1886. Cézanne painted beside him at Pontoise and later called him a father, and Gauguin studied under him. In the mid-1880s, at Éragny-sur-Epte, he took up the systematic divided colour of Seurat and Signac before returning to a freer manner. In old age a recurring eye infection prevented him from working outdoors except in warm weather, and he painted towns such as Rouen, Le Havre and Dieppe from upper-floor hotel windows. Here: The Church of St Jacques in Dieppe.