Camille Pissarro: The Audacity of Impressionism

(Hardback)

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From the acclaimed biographer and author of Balzac's Omelette, an engaging new work on the life of "the father of Impressionism" and the role his Jewish background played in his artistic creativity. The celebrated painter Camille Pissarro (1830-1903) occupied a central place in the artistic scene of his time- a founding member of the new school of French painting, he was a close friend of Monet, a longtime associate in Degas's and Mary Cassatt's experimental work, a support to Cezanne and Gauguin, and a comfort to Van Gogh, and was backed by the great Parisian art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel throughout his career. Nevertheless, he felt a persistent sense of being set apart, different, and hard to classify. Settled in France from the age of twenty-five but born in the Caribbean, he was not French and what is more he was Jewish. Although a resolute atheist who never interjected political or religious messages in his art, he was fully aware of the consequences of his lineage. Drawing on Pissarro's considerable body of work and a vast collection of letters that show his unrestrained thoughts, Anka Muhlstein offers a nuanced, intimate portrait of the artist whose independent spirit fostered an environment of freedom and autonomy.

Reviews

Czanne hailed him as the first Impressionist, and from these pages Pissarro certainly emerges as the most beguiling. Faced with every manner of obstaclefrom financial woes to anti-Semitism to the destruction of his paintings during the Paris Commune to an inhospitable art worldPissarro held his own, ceaselessly experimenting with new subjects and styles. Anka Muhlstein has done him proud. Lithe, incisive, and sparkling, this is a model biography. Stacy Schiff, author of Cleopatra: A Life and The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams

On rare occasions, a biography introduces you to an artist whose life reminds you of all the joy and beauty on offer to those who seek them, along with all the hardship the seeker must transcend. Camille Pissarro is such a character, and Anka Muhlsteins exquisite portrait of him is such a revelation. Judith Thurman,National Book Awardwinning author of Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller

Anka Muhlsteins life of Pissarro is a story about devotion. We see the young man travel from his native Saint Thomas in the Caribbean and create himself as a French painter in the shared adventure of Impressionism, holding fast to his vision through poverty, vilification, and family sorrow. A noble tale of art and friendship, in Muhlsteins telling, as dappled and subtle as Pissarros own paintings. When I reached the final pages, my heart was full. Rosanna Warren, author of Max Jacob: A Life in Art and Letters

Here is life-writing at its most vivid and engrossing. Pissarro emerges as heroic in his artistic dedication and collegial generositya patriarch and saint among the painters of modern life. Muhlsteins portrait pulses with all the particulars of a mighty life and career. Her Pissarro is irresistible. Benjamin Taylor, author of Proust: The Search

Praise for Monsieur Prousts Library:

This gemlike exploration of the literary underpinnings of la recherche du temps perdu reveals a Marcel Proust who did not so much read books as absorb them.The New Yorker

With Monsieur Prousts Library, Anka Muhlstein has added another volume to the collection of splendid books about Proust. A woman of intellectual refinement, subtle understanding, and deep literary cultureMuhlstein is an excellent provisioner of high-quality intellectual goods.Wall Street Journal

[Muhlstein] here turns her attention to Prousts enthusiasms, antagonisms, and literary influencessensitive to nuances of style and echoes of older standard French authors.Edmund White, New York Review of Books

Author Bio

Anka Muhlstein is the author of biographies of Queen Victoria, James de Rothschild, and Cavelier de La Salle; studies on Catherine de Medicis, Marie de Medicis, and Anne of Austria; a double biography, Elizabeth I and Mary Stuart; Balzac's Omelette (Other Press, 2011), Monsieur Proust's Library (Other Press, 2015), and The Pen and the Brush (Other Press, 2017). She won the Goncourt Prize for her biography of Astolphe de Custine, and has received two prizes from the Academie fran aise. She and her husband, Louis Begley, are the authors of Venice for Lovers. They live in New York City. Adriana Hunter studied French and Drama at the University of London. She has translated more than ninety books, including Marc Petitjean's The Heart- Frida Kahlo in Paris and Herve Le Tellier's The Anomaly and Electrico W, winner of the French-American Foundation's 2013 Translation Prize in Fiction. She lives in Kent, England.