Pissarro's Anarchy

Ever since his youth, Pissarro sympathized with the French anarchist movement. He believed that full potential is achieved through equality of classes and can only be fulfilled without the interference of the government and upper-class aristocrats. This is displayed in much of his earlier work, which depict lower-class citizens not as uncultured barbarians, as many upper-class patrons believed, but as dignified citizens. Pissarro also spent painstaking amounts in detailed brush strokes and revisions in his paintings of rural landscapes and lower class lifestyles, something usually reserved for flattering images for wealthy benefactors. His beliefs permeated his work, as well as fellow artists through his interactions. Pissarro was known for keeping the Impressionist movement together, and worked closely with those who would be founding Post-Impressionists, such as Seurat and Cezanne. These Post-Impressionists would follow in Pissarro’s footsteps of dignifying lower and middle class citizens, as well as challenge previously accepted artistic principles. Post-Impressionist painters would push Pissarro’s egalitarian notion that mankind is an equal platform, and even push it into a meta discussion of egalitarianism among art itself, not just among people. Pissarro’s anarchy may very well have been a stone that started the avalanche of what we now know as Modernism. Pissarro’s anarchistic beliefs manifest themselves in his paintings as well as those by Post-Impressionist and future painters.

Haymaking, Camille Pissarro, Oil on Canvas, 1887, Eragny, Van Gogh museum

Haymaking at Eragny is a well-known painting by Pissarro that depicts a rural farm with farmers harvesting hay. The painting is done in thousands of careful tiny brush strokes, pointing toward Pointillism. The dashes of bright color and dynamic movements of the farmers, and the pleasant weather and seasonal color harmony suggest that they are happy in their labor, elevate the lower class as equal humans capable of happiness just like the rich patrons that support artists like Pissarro.

The Boulevard Montmartre on a Winter Morning, Camille Pissarro, 1897, 60.174

The streets of Paris underwent large renovations in the late 19th Century, something which many Impressionist painters were enthusiastic about. Pissarro’s Boulevard Montmartre on a Winter Morning was part of a series of paintings as a gift for his son, and depicts a middle class urban environment. Following a change in France’s labor laws, lower and middle class citizens were given more free time to enjoy leisure, much to anarchists’ happiness. This painting depicts the everyday, similar to Haymaking, of working-class citizens. While Haymaking emphasizes the joy of labor, Winter Boulevard emphasizes the mundaneness leisure of the everyday as opposed to the lavish, extreme lifestyle of the upper-class.

A Sunday Afternoon on La Grande Jatte, Georges Seurat,1884 Oil on Canvas, Art Institute Chicago

Georges Seurat was one of Pissarro’s most famous friends and disciples, and a key figure in the Post-Impressionism and Pointillism movements. One of his masterpieces is Sunday Afternoon, a large-scale pointillist painting. It depicts people of working class and upper class relaxing together on a riverside, in a systematic method of tiny dots of paint reminiscent of Pissarro’s small brush strokes. This painting reflects Pissarro’s egalitarianism, that mankind is equal regardless of social class. It also hints at Winter Boulevard’s notion of working-class civilians deserving a leisure break every once in a while.

The Card Players, Paul Cezanne, Oil on Canvas, 1890-92, 61.10.11

Another close friend and disciple of Pissarro and Post-Impressionist was Cezanne. Cezanne uses a group of middle class men passing time by playing cards as his subject, choosing to use everyday working class similar to much of Pissarro’s works. While Pissarro’s and Seurat’s paintings focused on the scenery as a whole, this piece puts the focus on the figures, opting to display the working class through weathered grungy colors rather than action, clothing, or context. Cezanne’s signature sculptor-like method of applying paint, which he famously uses for his landscape paintings, is used here to give the scene a lasting, permanent feel. The men’s act of passing time and calm expressions give off a sense of immovability and lastingness, contrasting the ephemeral, lavish lifestyle of the upper-class.

The Milliner, Paul Signac, 1885, E.G. Bührle Foundation

Paul Signac, another key Post-Impressionist, painted this piece of two milliners, or hat makers, in their working environment, pointing back to Pissarro’s Haymaking. Although not in a rural environment like Haymaking, Milliners still serves the same purpose of dignifying working-class citizens. Pissarro’s technique of using thousands of tiny brush strokes is again found in this painting, and pushed even to more detail. This serves as a ease-in to the Pointillism movement, which was still being explored at the time. The subject matter seems to shout to the rich patrons that the fancy hats and items that they own have civilian workers behind them, that their lifestyles are dependant on the people they look down upon.

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, Pablo Picasso, 1907, Museum of Modern Art

One of Picasso’s most well-known artworks and key pieces in early Modernism, d’Avignon depicts a group of nude prostitutes. Although nude figures were nothing new, depicting prostitutes in suggestive poses was considered vulgar. Influenced by Cezanne, Pissarro’s anarchy indirectly affects Picasso’s work. While Pissarro dignified working-class proletarians and bourgeois, Picasso pushes it further to include the obscene outcasts of society. The method throws pre-accepted artistic principles out the window, taking Pissarro’s daring ingenuity and taking it in Picasso’s own direction, and challenged the definition of what “high art” is.