Camille Pissarro

Camille Pissarro was a French painter and a steady, fatherly presence at the heart of Impressionism. Born in 1830 in the Danish West Indies, he was the only artist to show work in all eight of the group's independent exhibitions, and he mentored younger painters including Cézanne and Gauguin. His warmth and openness made him a kind of anchor for the whole movement.

He painted rural life, country roads, and the changing weather of the French countryside, and later the busy boulevards and rooftops of Paris seen from high windows. For a time he experimented with the dot-by-dot method of Pointillism before returning to a looser touch. Modest and hardworking to the end, Pissarro is sometimes overshadowed by his more famous friends, but his role in Impressionism was central.