Lucien Pissarro was a French landscape painter, printmaker, wood engraver, designer, and printer of fine books. His landscape paintings employ techniques of Impressionism and Neo-Impressionism, but he also exhibited with Les XX. Apart from his landscapes, he painted a few still lifes and family portraits. Until 1890 he worked in France, but thereafter was based in Great Britain. He was the oldest son of the French Impressionist painter Camille Pissarro and his wife Julie.
Lucien Pissarro Reading, by J.B. Manson c.1913
Lucien Pissarro, Pastoral scene, 1901
Lucien Pissarro's house in Stamford Brook, London, with a blue plaque bearing the following inscription: "Lucien Pissarro 1863–1944 Painter, Printer, Wood Engraver lived here".
Neo-Impressionism is a term coined by French art critic Félix Fénéon in 1886 to describe an art movement founded by Georges Seurat. Seurat's most renowned masterpiece, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, marked the beginning of this movement when it first made its appearance at an exhibition of the Société des Artistes Indépendants in Paris. Around this time, the peak of France's modern era emerged and many painters were in search of new methods. Followers of Neo-Impressionism, in particular, were drawn to modern urban scenes as well as landscapes and seashores. Science-based interpretation of lines and colors influenced Neo-Impressionists' characterization of their own contemporary art. The Pointillist and Divisionist techniques are often mentioned in this context, because they were the dominant techniques in the beginning of the Neo-Impressionist movement.
Neo-Impressionism
Paul Signac, 1890, Portrait of Félix Fénéon (in front of an enamel of a rhythmic background of measures and angles, shades and colors), oil on canvas, 73.7 × 92.5 cm (28.9 × 36.4 in.), Museum of Modern Art, New York
Henri-Edmond Cross, The Evening Air (l'Air du soir), c. 1893, oil on canvas, 116 × 164 cm, Musée d'Orsay, Paris
Georges Seurat, Le Cirque, 1891, oil on canvas, 185 x 152 cm, Musée d'Orsay, Paris