International studio (60.1916/1917)

The Paintings of Lucien Pissarro

SOME NOTES ON THE PAINT¬
INGS OF LUCIEN PISSARRO.
BY J. B. MANSON.
Lucien Pissarro, better than any other painter,
illustrates the force of Carlyle’s dictum that “ the
poet can never have far to seek for a subject; the
elements of his art are in him and around him on
every hand; for him the Ideal world is not remote
from the Actual, but under it and within it: nay,
he is a poet precisely because he can discern it
there.” This faculty of finding, in the beauty of
everyday life, material for the exercise of their art
was a characteristic, from the beginning, of the
Impressionist school of painters. The general
tendency to underrate this power is due to the
fact that it is so seldom realised that a painter
expresses his vision through the medium of form,
colour, line, tone, etc., and that these qualities may
be manifested in a back street of London with as
interesting character and with as profound signifi-

cance as under the limpidity of a Venetian sky or
in the mystery of an Alpine gorge. It is all a
matter of relationship.
With the original group of French Impressionists
Lucien Pissarro was intimately connected. His
father, Camille Pissarro, was the most subtle and
most sensitive artist of the group. His - delicate
perception and exquisite feeling have not inherent
in them the power of attracting attention on the
walls of exhibitions, which are places, at best, for
the display of violence. So his work, by reason of
its incomparable qualities, has been long in
winning full appreciation. These qualities his son
has inherited and developed in his own personal
way.
Camille Pissarro had a passion for Nature which
amounted almost to pagan worship. His son has
the same love of Nature, modified by a certain
intellectual quality. And his point of view is
different. It is this love of Nature which is at
once his strength and his weakness.


“THE RIGGS, BROUGH’' BY LUCIEN PISSARRO
LX. No. 238.—December 1916


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