Editing Camille Pissarro (section)

==French Impressionism==
[[File:Camille Pissarro 023.jpg|thumb|left|''Landscape at [[Pontoise]]'', 1874]]
When Pissarro returned to his home in France after the war, he discovered that of the 1,500 paintings he had done over 20 years, which he was forced to leave behind when he moved to London, only 40 remained. The rest had been damaged or destroyed by the soldiers, who often used them as floor mats outside in the mud to keep their boots clean. It is assumed that many of those lost were done in the Impressionist style he was then developing, thereby "documenting the birth of [[Impressionism]]." Armand Silvestre, a critic, went so far as to call Pissarro "basically the inventor of this [Impressionist] painting"; however, Pissarro's role in the Impressionist movement was "less that of the great man of ideas than that of the good counselor and appeaser&nbsp;..." "Monet&nbsp;... could be seen as the guiding force."<ref name=Masters/>{{rp|280, 283}}

He soon reestablished his friendships with the other Impressionist artists of his earlier group, including Cézanne, Monet, Manet, Renoir, and Degas. Pissarro now expressed his opinion to the group that he wanted an alternative to the [[Salon (Paris)|Salon]] so their group could display their own unique styles.

To assist in that endeavour, in 1873 he helped establish a separate collective, called the "Société Anonyme des Artistes, Peintres, Sculpteurs et Graveurs," which included fifteen artists. Pissarro created the group's first charter and became the "pivotal" figure in establishing and holding the group together. One writer noted that with his prematurely grey beard, the forty-three-year-old Pissarro was regarded as a "wise elder and father figure" by the group.<ref name=Masters/> Yet he was able to work alongside the other artists on equal terms due to his youthful temperament and creativity. Another writer said of him that "he has unchanging spiritual youth and the look of an ancestor who remained a young man".<ref name="Gallery2"/>{{rp|36}}

===Impressionist exhibitions that shocked the critics===
[[File:Camille Pissarro (French, 1830-1903) Le grand noyer à l'Hermitage.jpg|thumb|''Le grand noyer à l'Hermitage'', 1875. The new manner of painting was too sketchy and looked incomplete.]]
The following year, in 1874, the group held their [[First Impressionist Exhibition]], which shocked and "horrified" the critics, who primarily appreciated only scenes portraying religious, historical, or mythological settings. They found fault with the Impressionist paintings on many grounds:<ref name=Masters/>
*The subject matter was considered "vulgar" and "commonplace," with scenes of street people going about their everyday lives. Pissarro's paintings, for instance, showed scenes of muddy, dirty, and unkempt settings;
*The manner of painting was too sketchy and looked incomplete, especially compared to the traditional styles of the period. The use of visible and expressive brushwork by all the artists was considered an insult to the craft of traditional artists, who often spent weeks on their work. Here, the paintings were often done in one sitting and the paints were applied wet-on-wet;
*The use of color by the Impressionists relied on new theories they developed, such as having shadows painted with the reflected light of surrounding, and often unseen, objects.

===A "revolutionary" style===
[[File:Camille Pissarro, Le verger (The Orchard), 1872.jpg|thumb|'' Orchard in Bloom, [[Louveciennes]]'', 1872]]
[[File:Camille Pissarro - The Hay Cart, Montfoucault - Google Art Project.jpg|thumbnail|''The Hay Cart, [[Lassay-les-Châteaux|Montfoucault]]'', 1879]]
Pissarro showed five of his paintings, all landscapes, at the exhibit, and again [[Émile Zola]] praised his art and that of the others. In the Impressionist exhibit of 1876, however, [[art critic]] Albert Wolff complained in his review, "Try to make M. Pissarro understand that trees are not violet, that sky is not the color of fresh butter&nbsp;..."  Journalist and art critic [[Octave Mirbeau]] on the other hand, writes, "Camille Pissarro has been a revolutionary through the revitalized working methods with which he has endowed painting".<ref name="Gallery2"/>{{rp|36}}
According to Rewald, Pissarro had taken on an attitude more simple and natural than the other artists. He writes:

:"Rather than glorifying—consciously or not—the rugged existence of the peasants, he placed them without any 'pose' in their habitual surroundings, thus becoming an objective chronicler of one of the many facets of contemporary life."<ref name=Rewald/>{{rp|20}}

In later years, Cézanne also recalled this period and referred to Pissarro as "the first Impressionist". In 1906, a few years after Pissarro's death, Cézanne, then 67 and a role model for the new generation of artists, paid Pissarro a debt of gratitude by having himself listed in an exhibition catalogue as "Paul Cézanne, pupil of Pissarro".<ref name=Rewald/>{{rp|45}}

Pissarro, [[Degas]], and American impressionist [[Mary Cassatt]] planned a journal of their original prints in the late 1870s, a project that nevertheless came to nothing when Degas withdrew.{{sfn|Mathews|1994|pages=139, 149}}<ref name=Masters/> Art historian and the artist's great-grandson Joachim Pissarro notes that they "professed a passionate disdain for the Salons and refused to exhibit at them."<ref name=Joachim/> Together they shared an "almost militant resolution" against the Salon, and through their later correspondences it is clear that their mutual admiration "was based on a kinship of ethical as well as aesthetic concerns".<ref name=Joachim/>

Cassatt had befriended Degas and Pissarro years earlier when she joined Pissarro's newly formed French Impressionist group and gave up opportunities to exhibit in the United States. She and Pissarro were often treated as "two outsiders" by the Salon since neither were French or had become French citizens. However, she was "fired up with the cause" of promoting Impressionism and looked forward to exhibiting "out of solidarity with her new friends".<ref>Roe, Sue. ''The Private Lives of the Impressionists'', HarperCollins (2006) p. 187</ref> Towards the end of the 1890s she began to distance herself from the Impressionists, avoiding Degas at times as she did not have the strength to defend herself against his "wicked tongue". Instead, she came to prefer the company of "the gentle Camille Pissarro", with whom she could speak frankly about the changing attitudes toward art.{{sfn|Mathews|1994|pages=190, 238–9}} She once described him as a teacher "that could have taught the stones to draw correctly."<ref name= Masters/>

=== Other mediums ===
Pissarro was also known to experiment with lithographs, woodblock engravings, and original techniques in multicolor etching and monotype.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Michael |first=Cora |date=2009 |title=Utopian Views of Rural Life in Prints by Camille Pissarro at the Princeton University Art Museum |url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/25747106 |journal=Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University |volume=68 |pages=38–45 |issn=0032-843X}}</ref> Art historian Cora Michael notes that "of the Impressionists, Pissarro was perhaps the one most devoted to printmaking and…approached prints from the point of view of an avant-garde artist."<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Michael |first=Cora |date=2009 |title=Utopian Views of Rural Life in Prints by Camille Pissarro at the Princeton University Art Museum |url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/25747106 |journal=Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University |volume=68 |pages=38–45 |issn=0032-843X}}</ref> In the 1880s to early 1890s, Pissarro returned to his studio in Pontoise, where he worked with many different print mediums to produce works such as "Vegetable Market at Pontoise" and "The Road to Rouen: The Hills of Pontoise".<ref>{{Cite web |title=Print collection acquisition: 91 prints by Pissarro |url=https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/art-and-stories/print-collection-acquisition-91-prints-by-pissarro |access-date=2024-12-02 |website=Van Gogh Museum |language=en}}</ref>