by Sonora Webster

Created on: October 11, 2009

Camille Pissarro was born on July 10th, 1830 in Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas of the Danish West Indies and died November 13th, 1903 in Eragny-sur-Epte and was buried in Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. This paper is going to tell the story that should have been told in regards to the artist responsible for Impressionism. Pissarro was a French Impressionist painter, who struggled through long lasting financial suffering though he stayed strong and determined to achieve his goal of impressionistic paintings.

Throughout Pissarro's life he communicates the significance of freedom. Pissarro was an offspring of Frederic and Rachel, a family from Braganza, a strong medieval city near the Spanish border. Pissarro and his family actively participated in the Marranos religion, also known as Sephardic Judaism, which was later forced from their lives because they were prohibited to practice their own religion in the town of St. Thomas and were forced to convert to Christianity or suffer at the hands of close examination by the countries government. Later in life, Pissarro fled, together with another painter named Fritz Melbye, to Venezuela in 1852. He then finally was able to pursue the life of an artist. His family pressured him to return to St. Thomas, which he finally did. But shortly after in 1855, he made his way to France where he remained for the rest of his life. Although Pissarro wrote many letters to his father, letters remained unwritten to his mother, because he was determined to erase all memories of his mothers chaotic and disapproving attitude toward his wife. Pissarro married a woman who stood for everything his mother did not want for her son. When he met her, Julie, she was employed as the cook's helper in his mother's house. She was not Jewish, she came from and ordinary social background, her family had no money, and the only language she could speak was French.

Forty-eight-year-old, Camille Pissarro flashed back to the beginning of his artistic career in a letter to painters, dealers, and collectors.

Living in Saint Thomas in 1952, [although] employed in a well-paying business, I could not endure the situation any longer, and without thinking, I abandoned all I had there and fled to Caracas, thus breaking bonds that tied me to bourgeois life. What I suffered is incredible, but I have lived: what I am suffering now is terrible, much worse even than when I was young, full of zeal and enthusiasm. Now I am convinced that my future is dead. Yet I

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