Paul Émile Pissarro

Portrait of Paul Émile Pissarro, painted by his father Camille, around 1890

Paul Émile Pissarro , also Paulémile Pissarro or Paul-Émile Pissarro (born August 22, 1884 in Éragny , France , † January 20, 1972 in Clécy in the Calvados department , France), was a French painter of Impressionism and Neo-Impressionism . He came from the artist family Pissarro .

Life

Paul Émile Pissarro was the fifth and youngest son of the Impressionist painter Camille Pissarro and his wife Julia, nee Vellay. His siblings were Lucien , Jeanne, Félix , Georges Henri , Ludovic Rodolphe and Jeanne (Cocotte).

He grew up in the artistic environment of his family's home in Paris. Encouraged by his father, he started drawing at an early age. The White Horse , which he drew when he was five, received much praise from art critic Octave Mirbeau . Camille was also impressed and kept the work in his private collection. At the age of fifteen Paul Émile attended the academy in Gisors , which he left after a few months to accompany his father on a painting trip to Le Havre , Dieppe and Rouen . Back in Paris he attended a private art academy.

After the death of his father in 1903, Paul Émile returned to Éragny to his mother. The painter Claude Monet , who lives in nearby Giverny and is one of Camille's closest friends, was Paul Émile's godfather and became his teacher and good friend after Camille's death. In 1905, Pissarro exhibited his Impressionist landscape painting Bords de l'Epte à Eragny for the first time in the Salon des Indépendants of the Société des Artistes Indépendants . His father had supported Paul Émile's artistic endeavors, but his mother now advised him to choose a conservative career. From 1908 Pissarro first worked as a car mechanic and test driver and later as a designer for lace and textiles. In addition to these activities, he still found time in which he occupied himself with painting. His brother Lucien, who lives in London, asked Paul Émile to send him a few watercolors for sale. Encouraged by the sale of his works, he left his job in the lace factory and wanted to devote himself to painting.

He moved to Burgundy with his wife Berthe, née Bennaiché . When the First World War broke out, he had just seriously devoted himself to painting there. Because of his health, he was released from military service so that he could travel and paint during the war years. His brother arranged exhibitions for him at the New English Art Club (NEAC), the Baillie Gallery and the Allied Artists Association in London.

Paul Émile Pissarro's work was strongly influenced by the painter Paul Cézanne , whose style his father Camille had already recommended to him. Paul Émile met several times with Cézanne in Paris, whose influence came to light from around 1918 in green and gold colors and classical compositions by Pissarro. His later use of spatulas instead of brushes was also inspired by Cézanne. He also experimented with printmaking , for which he made various woodcuts, some of which were first exhibited by Malcolm C. Salaman in 1919.

In the 1920s, Paul Émile Pissarro had established himself as a neo-impressionist painter. At that time he ran a joint studio in Paris with the artist Kees van Dongen . With him and the painters Maurice de Vlaminck , André Dunoyer de Segonzac and Raoul Dufy he traveled and painted in the summer and spent the winters in Paris. In 1924 he bought a house in Lyons-la-Forêt , a small town near Éragny, in the vicinity of which he found motifs to paint, especially the landscape around the Epte river , which meanders between pastures, meadows and hills . In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Paul Émile finally found his individual style of painting and reached the peak of his artistic development. In 1930, on the recommendation of Raoul Dufy, he traveled to Norman Switzerland for the first time on the Orne River , which runs through the valley next to the towns of Clécy and Le Vey. The combination of blue hills with green meadows, separated by the calm waters of the river, gave Pissarro a new environment for his painting work. Here he set up a studio in a houseboat - a converted rowing boat on the banks of the Orne in the garden of his house - from where he could concentrate on his favorite subject - reflections on calm water. During this period he gave up the use of unmixed paints and worked with a palette full of mixed shades, until eventually using his brush became less frequent and instead used the spatula more.

Grave of Paul Émile Pissarro in the Père-Lachaise cemetery

In 1935 Pissarro separated from his wife Berthe. In 1937 he and his second wife, Yvonne Beaupel, bought the house in Clécy, where he lived until his death. With Yvonne he fathered three children, Hugues Claude , Yvon and Véra. His two sons also turned to art. Much of the work he did in Clécy was exhibited in the Salon des Indépendants over the next thirty years .

In 1967, Paul Émile Pissarro's first solo exhibition in the United States took place at the Wally Findlay Gallery in New York , and his artistic oeuvre received widespread recognition; a professional success as a painter that only a few artists in the Pissarro family enjoyed during their lifetime. After his death in 1972, works by Paul Émile Pissarro were exhibited several times around the world. He was buried in the Cimetière du Père-Lachaise cemetery in Paris.

Works (selection)

La Maison Normande au Bord du Ruisseau Moulin de la Nation, around 1930 Le Pain de Sucre La Rivière, 1932 Le Cheval Blanc, around 1930 Les Rochers près de la Rivière, around 1940 L'Orne à Clécy, Calvados, around 1950 Neige à Cantepie, around 1950

Les Meules de Foin, around 1960 Ombre et Soleil, around 1960 L'Orne à Cantepie, around 1950 Le Village sous la Neige, around 1940 Le Pont du Vey, around 1940 Chaumière à Cantepie Le Village de Landel

rating

New York Art Magazine noted in 1970:

“Paulemile (sic!) Pissarros landscapes have no stylistic connections with those of his famous father. This is particularly true of his color, which does not interpret light and shade in terms of complementary hues. What Paulemile seeks is the solidity that Impressionism dissolved into colored light. "

“Paulémile Pissarro's landscapes have no stylistic relationship with those of his famous father. This is particularly true for his choice of colors, which does not interpret light and shadow as complementary shades of color. Rather, Paulémile is looking for the solidity that allows impressionism to dissolve into colored light. "

literature

• Will Grohmann : Pissarro, Paul Emile . In: Hans Vollmer (Hrsg.): General lexicon of fine artists from antiquity to the present . Founded by Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker . tape 27 : Piermaria – Ramsdell . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1933, p. 110 .
• Pissarro, Paul Emile . In: Hans Vollmer (Hrsg.): General Lexicon of Fine Artists of the XX. Century. tape 3 : K-P . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1956, p. 596 .
• Charles Kunstler: Trente-neuf reproductions de tableaux dont trois portraits par C. Pissarro. Girard & Brunino, Paris 1928 (French).
• Stern Art Dealers: Paulémile Pissarro, 1884–1972, Retrospective Exhibition: Stern Art Dealers, London, 24th November to 20th December 1997. London 1997 (English).
• Anne Thorold, Kristen Erickson: Camille Pissarro and his family: the Pissarro collection in the Ashmolean Museum. Biography and autobiography. Ashmolean Museum , 1993, p. 74 (English).
• Adrian M. Darmon (Editor): Around Jewish Art: A Dictionary of Painters, Sculptors, and Photographers Carnot, 2003, ISBN 2-84855-011-2 , p. 93 (English, Paulémile Pissarro. Books.google.de ).

Web links

Commons : Paul-Émile Pissarro  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Stern Pissarro Gallery: Painting by Paul Émile Pissarro (English pissarro.art )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Stern Pissarro Gallery: Pissarro Family. (English, pissarro.art ).
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l m} Paul Emile Pissarro, French (1884–1972) - (English, rogallery.com ).
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h} Paulémile Pissarro (1884–1972) In: Stern Pissarro Gallery (English). online ( Memento from February 5, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
4. ^ Joachim Pissarro , Claire Durand-Ruel Snollaerts: Pissarro. Critical catalog of paintings , Volume 3. Wildenstein Institute Publications, 2005 ISBN 88-7624-525-1 , pp. 577-578 (English, books.google.de ).
5. ↑ Malcolm C. Salaman: The Art of the Woodcut: Masterworks from the 1920s. Dover Fine Art, History of Art. Courier Corporation, 2013, ISBN 0-486-15422-X , p. 66 (English).
6. ↑ Roger Clark: Beyond the Spiral ( leliapissarro.com ).
7. ^ Wally Findlay Galleries, Paulémile Pissarro: Paulémile Pissarro (1884-): First Exhibition in the United States. Wally F. Galleries, 25S.
8. ↑ Arts Magazine. Volume 45. Art Digest Inc., New York City 1970 (English, books.google.de ).