Pissarro was born in Saint Thomas, Virgin Islands from French parents. He moved to Paris in
1855, where he studied with the French landscape painter Camille Corot. At first associated
with the Barbizon school, Pissarro subsequently joined the impressionists and was represented
in all their exhibitions. During the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71), he lived in England and made
a study of English art, particularly the landscapes of Joseph Mallord William Turner. For a
time in the 1880s Pissarro, discouraged with his work, experimented with pointillism; the new
style, however, proved unpopular with collectors and dealers, and he returned to a freer
impressionist style.
A painter of sunshine and the scintillating play of light, Pissarro produced many quiet
rural landscapes and river scenes; he also painted street scenes in Paris, Le Havre, and
London. An excellent teacher, he counted among his pupils and associates the French painters
Paul Gauguin and Paul Cézanne, his son Lucien Pissarro, and the American impressionist Mary
Cassatt. Despite acute eye trouble, his later years were his most prolific.
