Biography

PAULÉMILE PISSARRO

1884-1972

Paulémile Pissarro was born on the 22nd of August 1884 in Eragny, the fifth and youngest son of Camille Pissarro. With his father and four brothers being artists, he became part of an artistic household and began drawing at an early age. A white horse drawn when he was just five years old received much praise from the writer Mirbeau. Camille was so impressed that he kept it as a art of his private collection.

At he age of fifteen Paulémile attended a college in Gisors, but left after a few months in order to join his father on paintings trips to Le Harve, Dieppe and Rouen. For the last few years of Camille’s life the family lived in Paris where Paulémile attended a private art academy.

Following his fathers death in 1903, Paulémile returned to Eragny with his mother. Monet, who lived only 30 kilometers away a Giverny and who was one of Camille’s closest friends, became Paulémile’s tutor, guardian and friend. Paulémile often visited Giverny, where Monet encouraged him to paint and gave him lessons in both painting and horticulture, saying “Work! Search! Do as your father did!”. In 1905, Paulémile exhibited for the first time at the Salon des Independants an impressionist landscape titled “Bords de l’Epte a Eragny”.

The period 1908-1914 was difficult for Paulémile. Whilst his father had always supported his desire to be an artist, his mother, having survived the financial struggle of trying to raise a family without a steady income, was eager for him to learn a more practical trade. This lead him in 1908 to set his artistic pursuits aside. He worked first as an automobile mechanic and test-driver, and then later as a lace and textile designer, thus allowing his little time to paint.

While Paulémile was still working at the lace factory his brother Lucien, who lived in London, asked him to send over some watercolors. The sale of these works, and the interest shown by British collectors, encouraged Paulémile to leave the factory and dedicate himself to painting. With his young wife Berthe Bennaiche, he moved to Burgundy. He had just begun to work seriously when war broke out.

Exempt for military service due to illness, Paulémile used the war years to travel and paint and as he stove for individuality, his confidence and passion for art grew. In a letter to his older brother Lucien in 1916 he declared: “I have seen superb things, I am filled with enthusiasm.” With the help of Lucien, Paulémile exhibited in London at the New English Art Club, the Baillie Gallery and the Allied Artist’s Association.

Paulémile was very influenced by Cezanne. He remembered his father telling him and his brothers repeatedly “If you want to paint, look at Cezanne” and Paulémile knew his work at first hand from the landscapes and still-life paintings that hung in the family dining-room at Eragny. They also met several times on visits to Paris. Cezanne’s long-term influence on Paulémile’s work became evident in the green-gold palette and classical compositions used in his work from 1918 onwards and later on in the use of a palette knife instead of paintbrushes.

By the 1920s, Paulémile had become an established Post Impressionist artist in his own right. With his artist friends Van Dongeg, Vlaminck, de Segonzac and Raoul Dufy he would travel during the summer, painting in the French countryside and returning to Paris for the winter. In 1924 he bought a house in Lyons-la-Foret, a small town near Gisors and Eragny, where he had grown up. This was a landscape he painted with great pleasure, returning again and again to the placid waters of the river Epte winding its way among willows, meadows and hills.

It was during the late-20s and early-30s that Paulémile reaches the peak of his artistic development, arriving at the individual style for which he is best known. During this period he abandoned the pure colors and divided brush strokes of Impressionism for a palette of mixed tones, broaded gestures and eventually the palette knife. His compositions became strong and clear, his application tighter and thicker. Working from a boat equipped as a floating studio, Paulémile could focus on his favorite subject, reflections on calm water. He also explored printmaking, producing several successful wood-engravings and etchings, some of which were first published by Malcolm Salaman in 1919.

In 1930, on the recommendation of Raoul Dufy, Paulémile visited for the first time an area with hills and valleys calles Swiss Nromandy. He instantly fell in love with this part of the Calvados region and especially with the Orne, a river that runs through the valley adjacent to the villages of Clecy and le Vey. The combination of the blue hills and green meadows, separated by the calm waters of the river, offered Paulémile a new setting for his work which he exhibited at the Salon d’Automne and the Salon des Independants for the following thirty years.

Un 1935 his marriage to Berthe ended and Paulémile moved to Swiss Normandy. Two years later he bought a house in Clecy with his new wife Yvonne Beaupel and together thet had three children: Hughes-Claude, Yvon and Vera. Both sons grew up to become artists.

In 1967 he had his first one-man show in the United States at Wally Findlay Galleries in New York. This led to widespread recognition and a degree of professional success that few of the Pissarro artists had known during their lifetime. Since his death in 1972, Paulémile’s paintings have been exhibited both in France and abroad. Interest in his work continues to grow.