Camille Pissarro: A biography [Hardcover]

Kathleen Adler (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press (1978)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312114591
• ISBN-13: 978-0312114596
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,055,115 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Kathleen Adler, "Camille Pissaro: a biography", December 22, 2011

By 

Kenneth Hughes - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Camille Pissarro: A biography (Hardcover)

This is a satisfying, engaging and informative biography. At 208 pages, including notes on sources and a useful index, it is far less comprehensive or detailed than the much longer "Pissarro: His Life and Work" by Ralph E. Shikes and Paula Harper, which appeared a couple of years later, but for that it has advantages of compactness and focus. Although Kathleen Adler is an art historian who earned an M.A. from the Courtauld Institute with a thesis on Pissarro and who has written extensively on Impressionism in general and on Morisot, Cassatt, Renoir and Manet in particular, for this, her first book, she chose to concentrate on the painter's life rather than on his works. Thus there is no commentary on individual paintings; indeed, titles are given only when they are a necessary part of the narrative. It follows from this that there are also no color illustrations and no reproductions of oil paintings, although there are a few black and white reproductions of drawings, etchings and lithographs as well as a sprinkling of family photos to leaven the text.

That concentration on biography allows a clearer and more personal image of the painter to appear than might otherwise be the case. There is perhaps a bit too much of the standard kind of biographical narration that allows speculation and sympathetic supposition to take the place of hard documentation, such as on page 13, where we read that as a pupil in Paris the young Pissarro "wandered fascinated along the quais of the Seine, stopping to examine the engravings . . . ," etc. Well, he may have done, but how do we know? On the other hand, I suppose such imaginative fancies do no harm, and they make for a more narrative read. And eventually it does become clear that the author has steeped herself in all the source material that is available (correspondences, journals and diaries, critical commentaries, etc.) so deeply that her reconstructions of Pissarro's motivations and reactions are not unfounded. Adler is particularly good at bringing out the social connections among all the painters, critics, buyers, dealers and hangers-on who made up the background of the artist's life and seeing him in the context of his immediate and extended families. By quoting extensively from the available material, including the correspondences of others, she provides a palpable sense of the whole social and political milieu in which he was moving. For example, when we read about what Degas wrote to Bracquemond about what Caillabotte had said , etc., we know that while Pissarro is at center stage, there's a whole lot going on in the wings as well. This is a nicely compact and engaging look at an amazing life.