Camille Pissarro: Modernism, Anarchism, and the representation of the people, 1888--1903.

This study examines a body of paintings, drawings, and prints created by Camille Pissarro (1830--1903) during the last fifteen years of his life. In these oil paintings, prints, drawings, gouaches, and watercolors, Pissarro represented the people---peasants, bathers, urban workers and the homeless. I explore why this imagery was such an important part of Pissarro's oeuvre. By examining Pissarro's preparatory drawings, I trace the genesis of some of his major figure compositions. Through analyzing Pissarro's correspondence and reading critical writings, I consider what his images of the people signified to him and to his audience. I look at his images in relation to his Anarchist beliefs, and in relation to ideas about the people in nineteenth-century France. Information from social history helps to illuminate the localities, people, and activities he portrayed. The chapter entitled Pissarro's Images of Peasants, 1888--1903, focuses on five oil paintings depicting gleaning, planting potatoes, carrying water, gathering hay, and resting in the fields. I examine these in relation to the changing agriculture in northern France in Pissarro's day, and in relation to the concept of the people, looking at how the meaning of this term evolved from the French Revolution to the late nineteenth century. I also consider how Pissarro himself and his critics employed terms like rustique, caracteristique, paysanne, and decorative. The chapter on Pissarro's Bathers investigates depictions of peasant bathers in bucolic landscapes. I consider how Pissarro referenced images by earlier artists, including Boucher, Millet, and Rembrandt. I look at nineteenth-century bathing practices and imagery from the popular and Anarchist press. My analysis also considers the operation of the male gaze, and how peasant women were characterized as natural. Pissarro's Anarchism examines his involvement with the Anarchist movement, focusing on his portfolio of polemical drawings, Turpitudes socials, 1889. I examine two drawings in detail, investigating their family and topical references. The chapter also examines Pissarro's prints and drawings made for the Anarchist press. I conclude that Pissarro's Anarchism was expressed not only in his didactic prints and drawings, but also, importantly, in his oil paintings.Ph.D.Art historyCommunication and the ArtsUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/124493/2/3150029.pd