Self-Portrait (1873)
Camille Pissarro·1873
Historical Context
Pissarro's 1873 self-portrait, painted at Pontoise at the height of his Impressionist productivity, shows a man of forty-three with the serious, considered bearing of an artist conscious of his place within a significant artistic movement. The year 1873 was the eve of the first Impressionist exhibition, a period of collective self-definition for the group with which Pissarro was centrally involved — he was the only member to show in all eight Impressionist exhibitions. The self-portrait is thus a document of a pivotal moment in his career and in the history of the movement.
Technical Analysis
Pissarro models his own face with the same observational directness he brought to rural subjects, without vanity or idealisation. The Impressionist touch — broken colour, visible mark-making — is applied to the self-portrait with the same logic as to his landscapes, face and clothing treated as a visual field subject to the same optical analysis as a hillside or orchard.
