Art Review: Pissarro: Father of Impressionism fails to include one key element of the artist's life

The exhibition succeeds in justifying Pissarro as a catalyst for an entire artistic movement, but its omission of the artist's Jewish heritage lessens the true scope of his accomplishments.

The Ashmolean’s current major exhibition, Pissarro: Father of Impressionism (18 February - 12 June 2022), makes a grand statement, naming Pissarro as the driving figure of an entire artistic movement… and defends it well.

It presents 120 works — 80 of which were made by Pissarro and 40 by his contemporaries and those he influenced. The exhibition masterfully intersperses the pieces, showing the scope of Pissarro’s influence on notable Impressionists like Monet and Degas (more on Degas later), and post-Impressionists like Van Gogh and Cézanne. It presents the artist as an unwitting catalyst of an entire artistic movement.

Camille Pissarro acted as a mentor and friend to countless artists — Paul Cézanne, Claude Monet, Georges Seurat, Paul Signac, Paul Gauguin, and Mary Cassatt. He would constantly invite artists to paint with him, conjuring images of a kindly, gentle artistic guide that is not often associated with famous painters.

Yet the exhibition does not explore one very important aspect of Pissarro’s life and career: his Jewish heritage. There is one brief, indirect mention that Pissarro was Jewish in the section titled “The Pissarro Family.” The paragraph details his parents’ disapproval of his marriage to Julie Velley “on the grounds that she was uneducated and not Jewish.” The wording suggests that Pissarro’s Jewish identity is context that visitors already possess. Yet walking through the exhibition, I heard an elderly lady exclaim, standing in front of the label, “I didn’t know he was Jewish!” Personally, I didn’t know this fact until I read a Wikipedia article, not from any museum label.

While Pissarro tried to not outwardly present himself as Jewish, he still faced discrimination and persecution as a Jewish artist in 19th century France in the aftermath of the 1894 Dreyfus Affair. He was treated differently from other artists and ridiculed by those he once mentored and regarded as friends. For example, Degas — a raging anti-Semite — cut all contact with Pissarro after the Dreyfus Affair, even going so far as to say some truly terrible and hateful things about him when he died. As detailed on page 169 of Rebecca Abrams's brilliant book The Jewish Journey (which can be found in the exhibition gift shop), Degas wrote to another artist:

So he has died, the poor old wandering Jew ... What has he been thinking since the nasty affair, what did he think of the embarrassment one felt, in spite of oneself, in his company? ... What went on inside that old Israelite head of his? Did he think only of going back to the times when we were pretty nearly unaware of his terrible race?

The part of the exhibition that would benefit from including Pissarro's Jewish identity is the section describing how Pissarro tried to keep the group of Impressionists together despite growing conflict and disagreement. Unfortunately, the exhibition does not pursue this idea further. It would be helpful to discuss how the group of artists were divided on their opinions of the Dreyfus Affair and how that affected the unity of the group. Elsewhere in the exhibit, it talks in detail about Pissarro and Cézanne’s professional relationship and friendship, displaying a few of Cézanne’s paintings. The exhibition also mentions Degas extensively in the section on prints. However, not once are their anti-Semitic views noted.

During a period of rampant anti-Semitism in France, it is an incredibly impressive feat that Camille Pissarro was able to leave such an impact in art history to the point of being called the “Father of Impressionism,” mentor countless famous artists — some who later shunned him for his ethnicity —, and be the only artist to exhibit works in every Impressionist exhibition. While the Ashmolean produced a wonderful exhibit, giving Pissarro the prominence he deserves in art historical narratives, the exhibition would benefit from the context of his Jewish heritage — an essential part of Pissarro’s life and career.

Sources: The Jewish Journey: 4000 Years in 22 Objects from the Ashmolean Museum by Rebecca Abrams