Pissarro: Father of Impressionism review – the ‘old man’ who was always pushing art forward

Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
Camille Pissarro may be less famous than Monet, Renoir or Degas but his genius lay in always making you think, not feel

Camille Pissarro isn’t worried if he looks past it with his big white beard. He doesn’t care if he appears weak. He looks straight back at you from his self-portrait at the start of this exhibition, over the top of his spectacles, aged and maybe myopic. He is staring in the mirror, seeing himself honestly, with a grey Paris street on view through the window behind him.

Pissarro’s belief in art as a fundamentally honest enterprise shines through in this intimate exhibition that digs into avant-garde lives. His warmth is disarming. There are portraits of his wife, Julie, who was a cook’s assistant in his parents’ house when he fell in love with her, and some of their eight children, especially Lucien, who was evidently the apple of his father’s eye and grew up to become an artist. A drawing of a family picnic by his second son, Georges remembers a childhood among geniuses: while Julie cooks on a campfire, white-bearded dad talks to friends including Gauguin. Another friend, Cézanne, ignores them to paint the landscape.

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