Born on the island of St. Thomas in what was then the Danish West Indies (now the U.S. Virgin Islands) to French Jewish parents, Pissarro spent time in Caracas and La Guaira, Venezuela, before settling in Paris in 1855. There, he became acquainted with a group of young artists who were challenging the traditional modes of painting and would eventually go on to birth the Impressionist movement. A versatile artist, Pissarro embodied the role of insider, contributing to the establishment of Impressionism as a coherent avant-garde phenomenon while maintaining his artistic independence as he eschewed his peers’ choice of upper-class subject matter to depict scenes of the mundane. The Honest Eye reflects this dichotomy, while selections from Pissarro’s letters provide insights into his artistic process and worldview more broadly.

“Pissarro was a true architect of the impressionist movement. His colleague and friend Cezanne called him ‘the first impressionist.’ The only artist to present work at all eight Impressionist exhibitions in Paris, Pissarro was a defining figure whose oeuvre captured a changing society in the throes of industrialization, straddling the rural and urban in his depictions of daily life,” said Clarisse Fava-Piz, Associate Curator of European and American Art before 1900.

The exhibition traces four decades of Pissarro’s career, illustrating the evolution of his practice from his early years in the Caribbean and South America, to his time in Paris at the dawn of the Impressionist movement, to his family life in Éragny, and his later years depicting the cities and harbors of northern France.