Lot 149: Camille Pissarro (Saint-Thomas 1830-1903 Paris)

An assembly in San José with two men playing guitars in an interior (recto); Studies of babies (verso)
inscribed 'San Jose Ling...' (recto)
black chalk, watercolor
8 x 10 1/2 in. (203 x 260 mm.)

A group of twenty drawings by Camille Pissarro executed in Venezuela

This is the second and final part of a group of early drawings executed by Pissarro in Venezuela in 1854, while he was living there with the Danish artist Frits Melbye. The first section was sold in these Rooms, 25 January 2005.
Pissarro was born on 10 July 1830 in Charlotte Amélie, the capital of Saint-Thomas, then a Danish territory in the Virgin Islands. His family was of Jewish-Portugese origin and had moved from Bordeaux to Saint-Thomas just after the French Revolution. His father, who was born on the island, opened a shop selling goods imported from Europe and America. In 1842 Camille's parents sent the boy to France to a boarding school in Passy in order to further his education. The school was run by Monsieur Savary who gave Pissarro his first drawing lessons. When he left France in 1847, Savary gave the gifted boy a piece of advice, unintentionally comical, to take 'advantage of his life in the Tropics by drawing coconut trees'.
Back in Saint-Thomas the thriving artist went to work in his father's business but spent most of his time drawing. He met, probably at the dock running errands for his father, the young Danish artist Frits Melbye (1826-1869) who had just returned from Venezuela. The two became friends and the slightly older painter urged Pissarro to leave his parents' business and follow him back to Venezuela. Pissarro did not need much encouragement and discreetly ordered paint, paper, canvas and pencils. Without his parents' permission he soon left Saint-Thomas.
The two friends arrived in the port of La Guyara in Venezuela on 12 November 1852. They probably stayed on the coast for some time before travelling to the capital Caracas in 1853. The following twenty drawings were done the year after, in 1854, as is inscribed on the lot 195 'commencé en avril 1854'. Another drawing of the same album, lot 239 sold on 25 January 2005 in these rooms, was also drawn in April 1854, on Good Friday, in Caracas. Three further drawings from the present group were also executed in Caracas: lots 172, 185 and 195. According to Alfredo Boulton, Pissarro went to Galipan during the rainy season, in July 1854, and there he drew lots 161-2, 165, 179, and 189. Galipan was close to Caracas in the North in the Avila mountains.
As in the preceding group sold in 2005, and in other drawings executed in Venezuela, there are a number of drawings depicting locals playing the guitar, such as lots 159, 166, 171. But probably the two most important drawings from this group are lots 179 and 187, both depicting Pissarro's friend Melbye drawing. In the first drawing Pissarro drew the artist from afar on a hill top executing a drawing and overlooked by an Indian peasant. The second drawing is a real portrait. The features of Melbye are easily recognisable and can be compared to Pissarro's portrait of Melbye and with a photograph taken a few years later, both kept in the Castle of Fredericksborg in Denmark (Boulton, pp. 20 and 56).
In the middle of 1854 Pissarro's father and brother were eager for Camille to return to Saint-Thomas, in order to help them run the business, a need made even more acute with the death of one of his brothers and the declining health of another. But Pissarro refused and instead asked his parents permission to return to Saint-Thomas just for a short period in order to leave for Paris and become a painter. That permission was eventually granted and on 12 August 1854 Pissarro left La Guaya for Saint-Thomas, after nearly two years in Venezuela.
Cézanne said of Pissarro 'he was lucky to be born in the Antilles; there he learnt drawing without a master' (quoted in Boulton, p. 72). This was only partly true: he was first trained in Passy by Savary, and then through his friendship with Melbye he found a style to emulate. The few drawings of Venezuela by Melbye in the Central Bank in Caracas show that although the Danish artist's technique is close to Pissarro's, black chalk applied often in close hatching, the French artist quickly surpassed him. He had a much better sense of volume, of distance and atmosphere. Pissarro's watercolor technique is also infinitely better than Melbye's. Pissarro's experience in Venezuela proved not only a liberating influence on his art but also on his life, as he later wrote 'In Saint-Thomas I was a well paid shop assistant but I could not bear that situation much longer and without really thinking I abandoned everything I owned there and fled to Caracas. In doing so I broke all ties to bourgeois life'.
Three other large groups of drawings of Venezuela by Pissarro are extant: the first is in the Museo de Bellas Arte in Caracas, but comes originally from Hélène Pillement in Paris, the second is in the Banco Central de Venezuela, originally from the collection of Cyrus McCormick in New York, and the last is in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, given by the artist's son Lucien.

All information contained in the preceding text and in the following
notes is drawn from:
J. Rewald, Camille Pissarro in Venezuela, New York, 1964.
A. Boulton, Camille Pissarro en Venezuela, Caracas, 1966.
R. Soler, Camille Pissarro au Venezuela, exhib. cat., Paris, Venezuelan Embassy, 1978.