Camille Pissarro, Landscape Near Osny (State II), undated. Drypoint on paper, 12 5/8 x 14 in. The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

Camille Pissarro, born 183 years ago today on the island of St. Thomas, was not much for city life. Although he spent some time in Paris developing his craft and seeing his work accepted into the Paris Salon, Pissarro had a penchant for the pastoral-–not unlike those artists whose work he admired and studied like Camille Corot  (who was also Pissarro’s teacher) and Gustave Courbet.

The timeless, crowd-pleasing, (and my favorite) works by Pissarro that include French boulevards peppered with voyeurs, dandies, and stagecoaches, number few in comparison to the volume of his work focused on a simpler and quieter way of life. Much like that of his own with wife and children in the French countryside of Pontoise and later Louveciennes, village life remained a constant in his work.

Megan Clark, Manager of Center Initiatives