Being Pro-Semitic: Camille Pissarro

Jerry Brodsky is chair of FJMC’s Inclusion Initiative, president of the International Region and a member of KIO+ Region.

Camille Pissarro (1830-1903) was an Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painter who was a pivotal figure in the Impressionist movement. Born on the island of St. Thomas to parents of Portuguese Jewish and French Jewish ancestry, he is regarded as 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”. Paul Cézanne said “he was a father for me. A man to consult and a little like the good Lord”, and he was also one of Paul Gauguin’s masters. Renoir referred to his work as “revolutionary”; Pissarro is the only artist to have shown his work at all eight Paris Impressionist exhibitions, from 1874 to 1886. He was a mentor to Claude Monet and Edgar Degas acting as a father figure not only to the Impressionists but to all four of the major Post-Impressionists, Cézanne, Seurat, Gauguin, and van Gogh. He lived much of his life in Paris as one would gather enjoying the scenes he painted.

David Rozenson sourced from: National Gallery of Art. https://www.nga.gov/artists/1791-camille-pissarro
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Camille-Pissarro/The-Impressionist-years
Adam Gopnik, How Camille Pissarro Went from Mediocrity to Magnificence (The New Yorker, Dec. 25, 2023).
Rewald, John (1989). Camille Pissarro. Harry N. Abrams.
Clark Art Institute: Pissarro’s People—About the Artist. https://www.clarkart.edu/microsites/pissarro-s-people/about-the-artist
Michael Janofsky, A Man Behind Impressionism Gains Favor in Denver. New York Times Oct. 18, 2025.
Milwaukee Art Museum https://blog.mam.org/2015/08/25/from-the-collection-vegetable-market-at-pontoise-by-camille-pissarro/