Artists, Writers, Politics: Camille Pissarro and His Friends
Category: Books,Literature & Fiction,History & Criticism
Artists, Writers, Politics: Camille Pissarro and His Friends Details
The letters between family members and friends during most interesting period of impressionism and post-impressionism.
Reviews
The subtitle tells us exactly what this volume is: "An Archival Exhibition held at the Ashmolean Museum from 1 November 1980 to 4 January 1981," i.e., part of the commemoration of the 150th anniversary of Pissarro's birth. The archive referred to is the Pissarro Family Archive, which was given to the Ashmolean by Esther Pissarro, the widow of Camille's eldest son, Lucien, and subsequently augmented by a bequest from Orovida Pissarro, their only child, by donations of other descendants, and by occasional auction purchases. The exhibition was based mainly on materials in the Archive, with some supplements from private individuals and public collections. As an exhibition catalogue, however, this is a major disappointment because of the paucity of its illustrations. Granted, the exhibition was not intended to present a display of art works, but it did contain a good deal of visual material, very little of which, unfortunately, is reproduced in the catalogue. The structural basis of the exhibition was provided by Camille's letters to Lucien, a correspondence which stretched from 1883, when Lucien moved more or less permanently to England, to the painter's death in 1903. Given the breadth of Pissarro's acquaintance, the thoughtfulness of his nature and his participation in virtually every artistic impulse of his age, the correspondence is of fundamental importance in understanding the evolution of French painting in the later years of the nineteenth century, and it was an excellent idea to use the letters as the framework of the exhibition.As the title indicates, there were three categories of items on display. The largest category (78 of 196 articles) was that devoted to the artists in Pissarro's circle, and they ranged from household names like Renoir and Degas to the less celebrated, like Hippolyte Petitjean. As an example of what this is all about we can take Cezanne, who has five items in the collection, numbered from 9 to 13 (relatively low numbers in the 78, because the artists are in alphabetical order). Item 9 is from the Cezanne entry in "Les Hommes d'Aujourd'hui": portrait by Pissarro (a drawing from his 1874 etching) and text by Emile Bernard. Items 10-12 are excerpts of letters from Camille to Lucien from late 1895 to early 1896, when Ambroise Vollard was having a Cezanne exhibition; Pissarro writes to Lucien of his impressions and appreciation of Cezanne. The excerpts are given in the French originals only (none of the French material in the catalogue is translated), but there are notes in English that explain the contexts and references. Item 13 is a letter of 1912 from Lucien to Paul-Emile, his youngest brother, recalling the time around 1874, when Pissarro and Cezanne were working very closely together. It recounts a couple of anecdotes about Cezanne and speaks of their working methods together and their mutual influence. One of the few illustrations in the book is in this section: not a reproduction of Pissarro's drawing, unfortunately, but a photograph of Cezanne from 1890. The same procedure is followed for the writers, the more prominent among them being Huysmans, Verhaeren, and Zola, and for Pissarro's political friends like Jean Grave, Bernard Lazare, and Elysee Reclus. In the latter categories, the exhibit items tend to be newspaper articles, books, posters and other publications. Perhaps one ought not to take too much to task the austerity of the catalogue and just be grateful for the opportunity to read some things that one could not encounter short of visiting the Archive oneself--or not even there, such as Theodore Duret's letter of condolence to Lucien on the day after Camille's death (from the private collection of John Rewald): "C'etait un brave homme."