Happy birthday, painter Camille Pissarro

Two Women Chatting by the Sea, St. Thomas (1856); Inset: Camille Pissarro

It is the birthday of Danish-French Impressionist painter Camille Pissarro (1830), who is considered the dean of Impressionist and post-Impressionist painters. He served as a father figure to such talents as Paul Cezanne, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, and Georges Seurat. He was born on the Caribbean island of St. Thomas when it was a Danish possession. He was sent to boarding school in France and studied art. At first he painted in the traditional style, but then came under the influence of realist painter Gustave Courbet and landscape artist Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot.

Mary Cassatt makes a great impression

It is the birthday of painter and printmaker Mary Cassatt (1844), a leading artist of the Impressionist period in Paris and a friend and benefactor of Edgar Degas. She exhibited with the Impressionists and also at the Paris Salon. As a teenager, she overcame her father’s strenuous objection and studied in France, her mother along as a chaperone. As a young woman, she was commissioned to copy two paintings by Correggio in Italy for the Catholic Archdiocese of Pittsburgh. Later, in Paris, she helped wealthy friends collect Impressionists’ works, collections now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Cassatt’s work can be seen in museums around the world, and is still in demand by private collectors. Her painting, In the Box, once brought a price of $4.072 million at auction.

Happy birthday, artist Édouard Manet

It is the birthday of French painter Édouard Manet (1832), who caused a big stir in French society when he painted The Luncheon on the Grass (1863), showing one lady not wearing anything and another lady not wearing very much with two gentlemen who seem decidedly overdressed for the picnic. Critics sniped not only at the subject matter but also about the fact that he hadn’t seemed to spend much time painting it. It was so sketchy, they said, it seemed as if you didn’t actually see the scene as get an impression of it. Supporters said that was the whole point – the impression. Thus, the painting came to be one of the works that represents the beginning of the transition from Realism to Impressionism.

Happy birthday, Claude Monet

It is the birthday of French painter Claude Monet (1840), who is credited as the founder of the French impressionist painting movement. Here is an amazing multi-part BBC mini-series called The Impressionists. It begins with Monet. It is long but worth watching.