Camille Pissarro

Camille Pissarro was a French Impressionist painter.

Jacob-Abraham-Camille Pissarro was born at Charlotte Amalie (St. Thomas), Virgin Islands, to Abraham Gabriel Pissarro, a Portuguese Sephardic Jew, and Rachel Manzano-Pomié, from the Dominican Republic.

Pissarro lived in St. Thomas until age 12, when he went to a boarding school in Paris. He returned to St. Thomas where he drew in his free time.

In 1852 Pissarro left for Venezuela in the company of the Danish painter Fritz Melbye, and worked as an artist there for two years.

In 1855 he settled in France. He started painting and sketching in small towns and villages near Paris, along the Seine, Oise and Marne rivers on the advice of Corot.

During the Franco-Prussian War, Camille moved to England and, with Monet, he painted a series of landscapes around Norwood and Crystal Palace as well as studying English landscape painters in the museums.

In 1871 Pissarro settled in Pontoise where he spent the next ten years of this life.

In the 1880's Camille moved from Pontoise to nearby Osny, and then to Eragny, a small village much further from Paris.

Camille Pissarro was actively painting up until the end of his life. When he died in the autumn on 1903 in Paris, at the age of 73, he had finally gain public recognition.