Camille Pissarro: “Blessed are they who see beautiful things in humble places where other people see nothing”

Camille Pissarro

In the Mind of Great Artists

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“Blessed are they who see beautiful things in humble places where other people see nothing.”
Camille Pissarro.

Pissarro explained why art turns out to be essential in our lives.

Art trains us to watch things in particular and the general world through “new eyes.” Our world is the look we have of the world, and that look depends on the perspective we want to give it.

Pissarro was one of the founders of the Impressionism and participated in all the exhibitions of the group. He is considered as one of the most Impressionist of the movement.

He defended outdoor painting so as to capture the instant, the light and the atmospheric effects. At first was a great master of landscape and rural scenes. Nevertheless, due to a disease in his sight, he moved to the city and started to paint the urban landscape, and he turned into one of the most wonderful painters of the modern city.

He painted what he observed from the window, and this allowed him to represent the same setting at different times of the day, of the year and with diverse atmospheric conditions such as rain, sun, snow. He painted Boulevard Montmartre, just like Monet painted the series of the Rouen Cathedral at different times of the day.

Haussmann had redesigned Paris short time ago, which people in general did not like. “”I am delighted to be able to paint these Paris streets that people have come to call ugly, but which are so silvery, so luminous and vital.”

Pissarro considered that everything that is ugly in progress can have a beautiful side. Man’s wisdom may consist in how he looks and not in how he thinks. “Everything is beautiful, all that matters is to be able to interpret.”

Image: Boulevard Montmarte at Night (1897).

Recommended links:

Characteristic Elements of Impressionist Painting.

Impressionism.

Timeline: from Neoclassicism till the end of the 19th century.

Stories behind the Works of Art: Monet and the Rouen Cathedral.

Fundamental Paintings to Understand the History of Painting: Impression, Sunrise, Claude Monet.

Fundamental Paintings to Understand the History of Painting: Luncheon of the Boating Party, Renoir.

The First Series of Monet.

Women of the Impressionism.

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