Tag Archives: Camille Pissarro

Daily Diversion #80: Accidental Impressionism at the Car Wash

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I took these photographs from inside my husband’s Saab while he was washing the car last night. The sun was setting, and the glow from taillights and street lamps illuminated the parking lot. The effect was softened through the filter of a soap-drenched window. They remind me of Impressionist paintings.

Car Wash #1
Car Wash #2
Car Wash #3
Car Wash #4

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

A Year in Books/Day 114: Camille Pissarro Letters to His Son Lucien

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  • Title: Camille Pissarro Letters to His Son Lucien
  • Edited by: John Rewald
  • Year Published: 1943/This Edition: 2002 (MFA Publications)
  • Year Purchased: 2006
  • Source: Half Price Books
  • About: Camille Pissarro, the “father of Impressionism”, was the heart and soul of that loose collective of friends and acquaintances. Every week for twenty years, he wrote his son Lucien a letter. Read together, they are better than any art history class on Impressionism could ever be. His intelligence, dedication, humour and wisdom burst from every page. He was a quiet rebel who deliberately chose to live outside the bounds of acceptable society, knew everyone within the art community that there was to know, was never complacent in his search for artistic growth- all while remaining a rock for his (slightly) younger artist friends. The landscape of art history (ha!) would be entirely different without his very serious contributions.
  • Motivation: Starting when I was a girl-very young, just a few years-I would spend hours flipping through my Mom’s books. My favourite was a handsome folio of Impressionist paintings. It was then that I formed a connection to the work of Camille Pissarro that has never waned. He remains the only Impressionist painter whose work I truly love. Bonus: We share a birthday.
  • Times Read: 1
  • Random Excerpt/Page 132: “I had a long conversation with Renoir. He admitted to me that everybody, Durand and his former collectors attacked him, deploring his attempts to go beyond his romantic period. He seems to be very sensitive to what we think of his show; I told him that for us the search for unity was the end towards which every intelligent artist must bend his efforts, and even with great faults it was more intelligent and more artistic to do this than to remain enclosed in romanticism. Well, now he doesn’t get any more portraits to do.”
  • Happiness Scale: 10
    Landscape at Pontoise, 1874

    Landscape at Pontoise, 1874 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)