Volume 28, Number 8 · May 14, 1981
The Poet-Logician
By V.S. Pritchett
"Camille Pissarro, 1830-1903" August 9, 1981
an exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, May 19, 1981, to
Pissarro of Fine Arts, Boston
catalogue issued by the Arts Council of Great Britain and the Museum
264 pp., $15.95 (paper)
Camille Pissarro: A Catalogue of the Drawings in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
by Richard Brettell, by Christopher Lloyd
The Clarendon Press, 248 with 200 plates pp., £40
Pissarro: His Life and Work
by Ralph E. Shikes, by Paula Harper
Horizon Press, 362 pp., $30.00
The exhibition which celebrates the 150th anniversary of Pissarro's birth has now traveled from London to Paris and is soon to arrive in Boston, and three stout, handsomely illustrated and scholarly volumes are here to inform a layman like myself. They also test and enlarge our response to a restless and prolific artist of very complex character. The introductory essay to the general catalogue by John Rewald is a rhetorical attempt to revive the history of the long battle between the Impressionists and the Salon. He appeals to Nietzsche and grinds his teeth at the name of Gérôme. Two other contributors, Richard Brettell and Françoise Cachin, are more inquiring and more nourishing. The Ashmolean volume reproduces an enormous number of Pissarro's drawings and working sketches; we see Pissarro's foundations as a graphic artist who in fact came to painting late. And Ralph E. Shikes and Paula Harper are very searching and enlightening on the relation of the life and work.
Review, 2933 words
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