Camille Pissarro

Portrait of Felix Pissarro

1881

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Not on display

Artist: Camille Pissarro 1830–1903
Original title: Portrait de Félix Pissarro
Medium: Oil paint on canvas
Dimensions: Support: 552 × 464 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Bequeathed by Lucien Pissarro, the artist's son 1944
Reference: N05574

Display caption

This is a portrait of the artist's third son, aged seven. Unlike many other Impressionists, Camille Pissarro was concerned in his portraits to convey in a traditional manner something of the individual character of his sitters. Here he has captured his son in a pensive, as well as slightly bored or frustrated, attitude. His son went on to be a painter and engraver, but died at the age of only twenty-three from tuberculosis while living at Kew, London.

Gallery label, August 2004

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Catalogue entry

Camille Pissarro 1830-1903

N05574 Portrait de Félix Pissarro (Portrait of F?lix Pissarro) 1881

Inscribed 'C. Pissarro | 1881' t.l.
Oil on canvas, 21 ¾ x 18 ¼ (54 x 46)
Bequeathed by Lucien Pissarro to the National Gallery 1944; transferred 1950
Prov: Mme Pissarro, Eragny; Lucien Pissarro, London
Exh: Internationale de Peintures, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, May-June 1887 (2); L'Oeuvre de Camille Pissarro, Durand-Ruel, Paris, April 1904 (64); Camille Pissarro, Galerie Eugène Blot, Paris, May-June 1907 (6); Rétrospective des Oeuvres de Camille Pissarro (1830-1903), Galerie Manzi et Joyant, Paris, January-February 1914 (62); Memorial Exhibition of the Works of Camille Pissarro, 1830-1903, Leicester Galleries, London, May 1920 (66); Opening Exhibition of the Modern Foreign Gallery, Tate Gallery, June-October 1926 (works not numbered); Centenaire de la Naissance de Camille Pissarro, Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris, February-March 1930 (53); Oil Paintings by Camille Pissarro (1830-1903), Tate Gallery, June-October 1931 (28); Birmingham City Art Gallery, October-November 1931 (21); Castle Museum, Nottingham, November-December 1931; War Memorial Art Gallery, Stockport, January 1932 (22); Mappin Art Gallery, Sheffield, February-March 1932 (24); Bootle Public Museum, April-May 1932 (21); Leeds City Art Gallery, July 1932 (9); Northampton Art Gallery, August-September 1932 (16); Grundy Art Gallery, Blackpool, September 1932 (16); Rochdale Art Gallery, October-November 1932; Fifty Years of Portraits, Leicester Galleries, London, May-June 1935 (58, repr.); C. Pissarro, Stafford Gallery, London, May-June 1939 (14); 19th Century French Pictures, Russell-Cotes Art Gallery, Bournemouth, April-June 1960 (43)
Lit: Ludovic Rodo Pissarro and Lionello Venturi, Camille Pissarro: son Art - son Oeuvre (Paris 1939), No.550, Vol.1, p.159, repr. Vol.2, pl.114; John Rewald, Camille Pissarro (London 1963), p.128, repr. p.129 in colour
Repr: Charles Kunstler, Camille Pissarro (Paris 1930), pl.9

Félix Pissarro (1874-97), the artist's third son, known at home as Titi. He became a painter and engraver, and was considered exceptionally gifted, but he died at the age of only twenty-three from tuberculosis while living in London, at Kew. There are seven of his paintings and a selection of his prints in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Other portraits of him are Pissarro - Venturi Nos.620, 828 and 1553.

Published in:
Ronald Alley, Catalogue of the Tate Gallery's Collection of Modern Art other than Works by British Artists, Tate Gallery and Sotheby Parke-Bernet, London 1981, pp.610-11, reproduced p.610