Camille Pissarro

Camille Pissarro is often called the dean of the Impressionist painters, the only artist to exhibit in all eight of the group's Paris exhibitions between 1874 and 1886, a fact regularly cited as evidence of the organizational and mentoring role that held the fractious group together through his age and temperament. His work centers on rural landscapes, peasant labor, market scenes and later Parisian cityscapes, built from close observation of natural light on the land rather than urban leisure. He mentored a generation of younger painters, notably Paul Cezanne and Paul Gauguin, who called him Father Pissarro, and around 1885 to 1888 he adopted the pointillist technique of Georges Seurat and Paul Signac before returning to a broader Impressionist manner in his final years.