Pissarro

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".

His Impressionist contemporaries, however, continued to view his independence as a "mark of integrity", and they turned to him for advice, referring to him as "Père Pissarro" (father Pissarro).

Initially the friendship formed in the mid-1860s between Pissarro and Cézanne was that of master and disciple, in which Pissarro exerted a formative influence on the younger artist.

The 1,500-page, three-volume work is the most comprehensive collection of Pissarro paintings to date, and contains accompanying images of drawings and studies, as well as photographs of Pissarro and his family that had not previously been published.

While they shared ideas during their work, the younger Cézanne wanted to study the countryside through Pissarro's eyes, as he admired Pissarro's landscapes from the 1860s.

He is writing a book about the historic center of Naples, and with Pissarro he conducted a sequence of interviews with museum directors for Brooklyn Rail.

It’s a great example of the acute mind of Pissarro, who is often crudely described as an impressionist but in reality was one of the first in the movement to look beyond its obsession with fleeting appearances.

This notably applies to Paul Gauguin, Vincent Van Gogh, Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Toulouse-Lautrec, Pierre Auguste-Renoir, Camille Pissarro, Mary Cassatt – and many other artists – including James Abbot McNeill Whistler.

According to Pissarro's son, Lucien, his father painted regularly with Cézanne beginning in 1872.

Although Van Gogh never boarded with him, Pissarro did explain to him the various ways of finding and expressing light and color, ideas which he later used in his paintings, notes Lucien.

Art historian Diane Kelder notes that it was Pissarro who introduced Gauguin, who was then a young stockbroker studying to become an artist, to Degas and Cézanne.

Art historian John Rewald called Pissarro the "dean of the Impressionist painters", not only because he was the oldest of the group, but also "by virtue of his wisdom and his balanced, kind, and warmhearted personality".

As a result, Pissarro worked in the traditional and prescribed manner to satisfy the tastes of its official committee.

Brion 1974, p. 26 Under Pissarro's influence Cézanne began to abandon dark colours and his canvases grew much brighter.

By the 1880s, Pissarro began to explore new themes and methods of painting to break out of what he felt was an artistic "mire".

Cézanne, although only nine years younger than Pissarro, said that "he was a father for me.

Disagreements arose from issues such as Guillaumin's membership in the group, championed by Pissarro and Cézanne against opposition from Monet and Degas, who thought him unworthy.

Gachet was an amateur painter and had treated several other artists – Camille Pissarro had recommended him.

He recalls that Cézanne walked a few miles to join Pissarro at various settings in Pontoise.

His "headstrong courage and a tenacity to undertake and sustain the career of an artist", writes Joachim Pissarro, was due to his "lack of fear of the immediate repercussions" of his stylistic decisions.