00:30The Impressionist painter Jacob Abraham Camille Pissarro was born in St. Thomas, Danish West Indies.
00:39To Abraham Gabriel Pissarro, a Portuguese Sephardic Jew, and Rachel Manzana Pomi, from the Dominican Republic.
00:50Relocating to Paris as a young man, Pissarro began experimenting with art, eventually helping to shape the Impressionist movement with friends including Claude Monet and Edgar Degas.
01:05Pissarro was the only artist to show his work in all eight Impressionist group exhibitions.
01:12The picture The Garden of Lille-Meturat at Bontoise was created in 1876 and shown a year later at the third Impressionist exhibition in Paris.
01:25The painter depicts a woman gazing into a glass bowl. In all likelihood, it is Maria Durem, a prominent author and political figure in 1860s France who fought for women's rights.
01:40She and Pissarro were friends, and Pissarro too was very forward-thinking politically.
01:46Pissarro was one of the most innovative of the Impressionists, constantly searching for new means of expression.
01:54He was among the first to divide colors, as in his painting The Garden of Lille-Meturat at Pontoise, where the sunlit path is made up of brush strokes of pink, blue, white and yellow ochre.
02:08At the moment, the painting is in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, the United States.
02:16The picture Haymaking Irani was created by Pissarro in 1887.
02:22It is a fresh, pastel-colored painting that shows people bringing in the hay at Irani.
02:30The haystacks and peasant figures make for a dynamic composition.
02:36The paint has been applied in dots and short strokes of contrasting color, which deftly convey the shimmering light of a summer's day.
02:45Pissarro experimented with the neo-impressionist or pointillist stipple technique for some time after 1886, but he applied it more freely and less systematically than the movement's founders Sera and Siniak.
03:03Haymaking is one of his most charming paintings from this period.
03:09Pissarro was like a mentor to another great master, Van Gogh, who wrote to his brother such words.
03:16What Pissarro says is true.
03:19The effects colors produce through their harmonies or discords should be boldly exaggerated.
03:26Currently, the painting is in Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
03:32One day in 1897, Camille Pissarro rented a room at the Grand Hotel de Russie in Paris in order to have a perfect view of Montmartre Boulevard.
03:45He installed himself and proceeded to paint Boulevard Montmartre Afternoon Sunshine.
03:52The master's goal was to capture the true essence of the busy Parisian street.
03:58From his elevated station in the hotel, the artist could obtain a bird's eye view of the people, carriages and events that were unfolding before him.
04:10The picture is an epic display of life in Paris during the working hours of the day.
04:16The painting's aura is one of activity and purpose.
04:20The master skillfully conveys the rich atmospheric effects, the complex colors and ethereal feeling of a gloomy day.
04:29This image of fast-moving, dynamic urban life, so convincingly captured by the artist's rapid brushwork, presents the image of a contemporary city.
04:41Not in a ceremonial or official mood, but animated and alive.
04:46Boulevard Montmartre Afternoon Sunshine is located at the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia.
04:59Boulevard Montmartre Afternoon Sunshine is located here.
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