Camille Pissarro

A Best Book of 2023 by The New Yorker From the acclaimed biographer and author of Balzac’s Omelette , an engaging new work on the life of “the father of Impressionism” and the role his Jewish background played in his artistic creativity. The celebrated painter Camille Pissarro (1830–1903) occupied a central place in the artistic scene of his time: a founding member of the new school of French painting, he was a close friend of Monet, a longtime associate in Degas’s and Mary Cassatt’s experimental work, a support to Cézanne and Gauguin, and a comfort to Van Gogh, and was backed by the great Parisian art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel throughout his career. Nevertheless, he felt a persistent sense of being set apart, different, and hard to classify. Settled in France from the age of twenty-five but born in the Caribbean, he was not French and what is more he was Jewish. Although a resolute atheist who never interjected political or religious messages in his art, he was fully aware of the consequences of his lineage. Drawing on Pissarro’s considerable body of work and a vast collection of letters that show his unrestrained thoughts, Anka Muhlstein offers a nuanced, intimate portrait of the artist whose independent spirit fostered an environment of freedom and autonomy.