Art e Dossier

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Art History

Jacob Camille Pissarro: biography

The year 1885 marked the beginning of what has come to be known as Pissarro’s neo-Impressionist phase. The artist, who was living near Paris, Eragny-sur-Epte followed the studies of Seurat and Signac whom he had met through Guillaumin. These studies aimed at developing a new technique based on scientific principles such as breaking down colors into primary and secondary and applying them to the canvas in small dots of pure, unmixed pigment to render the true values of light. Closely placed points – or dots – of color create an effect of greater luminosity that Pissarro defined as an” optical mixture”. In any event, in Pissarro’s work the scientific rigor of Seurat and Signac is limited by his tendency to “build” space and by the subjects’ emotional intonation which, as in this case, directly recalls Millet’s The Gleaners.

The works