Camille Pissarro Paintings

About Camille Pissarro

Jacob Abraham Camille Pissarro, 1830 to 1903, was a Danish-French Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist painter, born on the island of Saint Thomas. His artistic importance rests on his contributions to both Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, which is a rare thing to be able to say about one painter. He studied from great forerunners, Gustave Courbet and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot among them, and while the Impressionists were making their name he kept working the same way. Later he studied and worked alongside Georges Seurat and Paul Signac, taking on the Neo-Impressionist style at the age of 54.

Painting ran in the family. His son Lucien Pissarro painted too, and Lucien's daughter Orovida Pissarro, 1893 to 1968, was a British painter and etcher who spent most of her career at a distance from the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist manner of her father and her grandfather, working instead in a technique drawn from Chinese and other Asiatic art. The subjects in this collection are the ones Camille Pissarro kept for years: the market scenes and cityscapes, from the marketplaces of Pontoise to the streets of Paris, the rural landscapes and countryside views, and the portraits and figure painting that sit beside them. The artistic reach is wider than the fields suggest, and titles such as The Crystal Palace, London and The Telegraph Tower at Montmartre are in here too.

Series and periods

Pissarro worked a place until it was used up, then moved, so this collection reads best by where he was standing. The first group is the one people arrive on, while the last is the quietest.

• Paris streets and boulevards: the city from a window above it, in rain, in spring and in snow. This is the group with the best known picture in it, and the square in front of the Theatre-Francais belongs to it as well. Titles here: Boulevard Montmartre, Spring Rain, Avenue de l'Opera, Rain Effect, Place du Theatre-Francais, Spring, The Garden of the Tuileries, Morning, Spring, The Seine Viewed from the Pont Neuf, Winter.
• The Louvre, one view many times: the same stretch of the Seine and the Louvre painted again and again under different weather, which is why the catalog carries a plain morning, a snow effect and a second version of the winter one. It is the habit that made him useful to the Impressionists: one window, many canvases. Titles here: The Louvre, Morning, Sun, Quai Malaquais, The Louvre, Morning, The Louvre, Morning, Snow Effect, The Louvre, Winter Sunlight, Morning, 2nd Version.
• Éragny and the countryside: the village work at Éragny, hay, orchards and figures in a field, the rural landscapes the collection description puts second. Titles here: The Harvest of Hay in Eragny, Flowering Plum Tree, Eragny, Grey Weather, Morning with Figures, Eragny, The Tumbledown Cottage near Osny.
• Rouen, Dieppe and Le Havre: the ports and the cathedral city, painted at the water where the working boats were. The riverside walk at Rouen comes twice, once grey and once in sunlight, which is the whole method in two canvases. Titles here: The Cours la Riene, The Notre Dame Cathedral, Rouen, The Cours la Reine at Rouen, Morning, Sunlight, Dieppe, Dunquesne Basin, Low Tide, The Inner Port and Pilots Jetty, Havre, The Port of Le Havre.
• Pontoise, the railway and the road north: the market town he is tied to, the bridge, the train and a windmill over the border in Belgium. Titles here: The Railway Bridge, Pontoise, The Train, Bedford Park, The Knocke Windmill, Belgium.
• Figures and flowers: the smaller, closer subjects, a boy writing and a bowl of roses. Titles here: Paul Writing, Roses of Nice.

Most famous works

These are the Camille Pissarro titles people ask for most here, ordered by the traffic each page draws and by what actually sells. Each title opens its own page, where you choose the size and decide on a frame. Every one is new work in oil, painted after Pissarro to order, and no two hands read a brushstroke the same way.

• The Harvest of Hay in Eragny: the most visited page in this collection and one of the best selling titles too, the hay harvest at Éragny with figures working across the field and the light held at one hour of the day
• Boulevard Montmartre, Spring Rain: the boulevard seen from above in spring rain, the traffic and the umbrellas dissolved into wet grey. It is the Pissarro title on our list of the 100 most famous paintings
• Roses of Nice: cut roses from the south, one of the few still life subjects among the streets and the fields, and an easy one to live with in a small room
• The Seine Viewed from the Pont Neuf, Winter: the river from the Pont Neuf in winter, the city flattened by cold light
• The Inner Port and Pilots Jetty, Havre: the inner harbor at Le Havre with the pilots' jetty, masts and working boats packed in
• Flowering Plum Tree, Eragny: a plum tree in flower at Éragny, the orchard subject in spring
• The Knocke Windmill, Belgium: a windmill at Knocke in Belgium, one of the trips outside France
• The Train, Bedford Park: a train at Bedford Park, smoke and suburban houses, from the English side of the family story, and a reminder that St. Thomas, London and Paris all sit in one lifetime
• The Cours la Riene, The Notre Dame Cathedral, Rouen: the riverside walk at Rouen with the cathedral behind it
• The Garden of the Tuileries, Morning, Spring: the Tuileries gardens in spring, seen from a window above the trees
• The Louvre, Morning, Sun, Quai Malaquais: the Louvre and the Quai Malaquais in morning sun, one of the versions of that single view
• Grey Weather, Morning with Figures, Eragny: grey morning at Éragny with figures in the field, the weather doing the work
• The Louvre, Winter Sunlight, Morning, 2nd Version: the second version of the winter morning, which is how the series worked: one window, one motif, many canvases
• Avenue de l'Opera, Rain Effect: the Avenue de l'Opera under rain, the wet street throwing the light back up at the buildings. The rain pictures of the Avenue de l'Opera are the ones people ask about first
• Dieppe, Dunquesne Basin, Sunlight Effect, Morning, Low Tide: the basin at Dieppe at low tide in morning sunlight, hulls sitting on the mud
• Paul Writing: a boy bent over a page, the Paul of the title, one of the figure paintings in a collection that is mostly outdoors
• The Louvre, Morning, Snow Effect: the same view with snow on it, the light coming off the ground instead of the sky
• The Tumbledown Cottage near Osny: a half-ruined cottage near Osny, the countryside without any picturesque help
• The Railway Bridge, Pontoise: the railway bridge at Pontoise, the town he is most closely tied to
• The Port of Le Havre: the port at Le Havre, cranes and steamers in the working part of the harbor rather than the pretty end of it

Browse by subject

Pissarro's subjects run through other collections of ours, and each one is a different door into the same painter.

• Impressionism: 6,138 works, the 19th-century art movement marked by visible brush strokes, open composition, ordinary subject matter, unusual visual angles and the accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities, which came out of a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s. Pissarro is a leading figure of this movement, and this is the collection he belongs to first.
• Post-Impressionism: 2,226 canvases, the mainly French movement that ran from the last Impressionist exhibition in 1886 to the birth of Fauvism around 1905, a reaction against the Impressionist concern with the naturalistic depiction of light and color, with Cezanne, Gauguin, van Gogh and Seurat as its principal artists. He contributed to this one as well, and took on the Neo-Impressionist style at 54, working beside Georges Seurat and Paul Signac.
• Landscape paintings: 8,004 titles, the genre in which the main subject is a wide view of natural scenery, mountains, valleys, rivers, trees and forests, with sky almost always in the view and weather often an element of the composition. The rural landscapes and countryside views, Éragny, Osny and the fields around Pontoise.
• Seascape paintings: 4,178 pieces, figurative work that draws its main inspiration from the sea, a genre particularly strong from the 17th to the 19th centuries and stretched in practice to cover shipping on rivers and estuaries, beach scenes and anything with a boat in it. The ports: Le Havre, Dieppe and the Seine at Rouen.
• Flower paintings: 1,325 paintings, The Roses of Nice and the flowering orchards, the closest he comes to a still life.
• The 100 most famous paintings of all time: one canvas by Pissarro sit on this list, our reading of the best known paintings in art history, the boulevard in spring rain.

The full list of painters we reproduce in oil is on the artist index.

How each reproduction is painted

Nothing here is stock. When you order, an artist paints that title in oil on canvas in the size you picked, layer by layer, and you see a photograph of the finished painting and approve it before it leaves the studio. Our artists each have 15 or more years at the easel and work from the public-domain original, and revisions are free. Seven sizes are available and the frame is optional, so the same picture can be a small study by a desk or the one thing on a wall. Shipping is free worldwide and returns stay open for 90 days.

Frequently asked questions

Who was Camille Pissarro?

Jacob Abraham Camille Pissarro, 1830 to 1903, a Danish-French Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist painter born on the island of Saint Thomas. His importance rests on his contributions to both Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, and our collection description calls him a leading figure of the Impressionist movement, which is where most people meet him first.

Who did Pissarro learn from and work with?

He studied from great forerunners, among them Gustave Courbet and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot. Later he studied and worked alongside Georges Seurat and Paul Signac, and took on the Neo-Impressionist style at the age of 54, which is late for a change of method.

Were other Pissarros painters?

Yes. His son Lucien Pissarro was a painter, and Lucien's daughter Orovida Pissarro, 1893 to 1968, was a British painter and etcher. She kept her distance from the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist manner of her father and her grandfather, working in a technique influenced by Chinese and other Asiatic art.

What did Camille Pissarro paint?

Three groups, in the order this collection uses them. Market scenes and cityscapes, from the marketplaces of Pontoise to the streets of Paris. Rural landscapes and countryside views. Portraits and figure painting. The same motif often comes back in several canvases under different weather.

Which Pissarro painting should I start with?

The Harvest of Hay in Eragny draws the most visitors here and also sells best. For the city, take Boulevard Montmartre, Spring Rain, the one Pissarro on our list of the 100 most famous. For a small wall, take one of the Louvre mornings or the Roses of Nice.

Are these original Camille Pissarro paintings?

No. Each one is a new painting, made by hand in oil on canvas after Pissarro's composition. It is a reproduction, not a print, and not the original canvas.

What sizes and frames can I order?

Every Pissarro reproduction here comes in seven sizes, with an optional frame. You see a photo of the finished oil painting and approve it before it ships, worldwide shipping is free, and returns stay open for 90 days.