The Honest Eye: Camille Pissarro’s Impressionism

The Honest Eye: Camille Pissarro’s Impressionism is the first major U.S. retrospective of Camille Pissarro, known as "the first impressionist," in over 40 years. The exhibition will present an overview of the artist’s illustrious career and examine his singular role within the Impressionist movement.

Bringing together more than 100 paintings from nearly 50 international museums and private collections, alongside six works from the Denver Art Museum's holdings, the exhibition will feature landscapes, cityscapes, still lifes, and figure paintings, showcasing the breadth of Pissarro’s oeuvre and the various influences that shaped his practice as he responded to the social and political environment of the day. Co-organized with the Museum Barberini in Potsdam, Germany, Denver is the only U.S. stop for this show.

Born on the island of St. Thomas in what was then the Danish West Indies (now the U.S. Virgin Islands) to French Jewish parents, Pissarro spent time in Caracas and La Guaira, Venezuela, before settling in Paris in 1855. There, he became acquainted with a group of young artists who were challenging the traditional modes of painting and would eventually go on to birth the Impressionist movement. A versatile artist, Pissarro embodied the role of insider, contributing to the establishment of Impressionism as a coherent avant-garde phenomenon while maintaining his artistic independence as he eschewed his peers’ choice of upper-class subject matter to depict scenes of the mundane. Pissarro's Impressionism reflects this dichotomy, while selections from Pissarro’s letters provide insights into his artistic process and worldview more broadly.