Lucien Pissarro
Son of Camille Pissarro, one of the central figures of the Impressionist movement, Lucien learned from his father, who was known as a gifted teacher, to approach painting with an autonomous and independent gaze. It is notsurprising, therefore, that Lucien embraced the linguistic innovations of Pointillism, theorised by Georges Seurat as a possible evolution of Impressionism. While most of the original Impressionists did not accept the changes introduced by this new generation of artists and firmly opposed the participation of Seurat and his followers in the Impressionist exhibition of 1886, the Pissarro family fully understood their reasons and defended them with swords drawn, exhibiting with Seurat and Signac in a separate room intended to signal their distance from the other artists, who were largely hostile to the new movement. In this landscape,the influence of Lucien’s father is evident, although mediated by his own personality. Torn between Pointillism and Impressionism, he sought a middle ground between the two worlds, painting a sun-drenched countryside view with a brushstroke that neither fully obeys Seurat’s principle of the rigorous chromatic divisionism, nor doesit abandon itself to the lightness of the Impressionist touch.