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CAMILLE PISSARRO
Saint Thomas (Virgin Islands)
1830 ~ 1903 Paris
Camille Pissarro was a prolific draughtsman and one of the most original print makers of the second half of the nineteenth century. Pissarro was a friend of Jean Grave, France's leading anarchist-communist who
emphasised the revolutionary potential of art. In fact Pissarro went through a violent streak of anarchism and even spent a self-imposed period of political exile in Belgium in 1894. Like so many anarchist
intellectuals he hated the exploitation of the industrial worker and illustrated radical themes of protest with images, for instance, of the unemployed migrants, made jobless by the decline in agriculture, who
wandered through French villages begging for food. At the same time, although he loathed the implications of the new industrial buildings, he could also see them as an important part of the new reality of the French
landscape or waterfront.
Our sheet, The Coal Shovelers at Rouen (Les Debadeurs a Rouen), was drawn in the docks in that city and is the most powerful of at least three drawings of this subject by the
artist. The tenebrous style used here had already been perfected by Millet and Seurat. Pissarro probably did not encounter Seurat until 1885 when the latter was producing his more mysterious tenebrous drawings of
industrial scenes.1 Pissarro submitted a less finished pen and crayon version, now at Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, Massachusetts,2 to the anarchist publication, La Plume Litteraire, Artistique et Sociale,
for the issue appearing on 1st May, 1893. It was used as an illustration for the article 'Philosophie de l'anarchie' by André Veidaux.3 A third drawing, in black chalk on tracing paper, is in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.4 This third drawing only shows the three foreground figures, rather loosely drawn, in front of an outline for the coal heap. It does not appear to have been traced from either of the other sheets and its role in this complex preparatory process has not yet been determined. However, it shows the strong influence of Millet.
1. Richard Brettell & Christopher Lloyd, A Catalogue of the Drawings by Camille Pissarro in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 1980, p.149,
cat. no. 159.
2. Ralph E. Shikes and Paula Harper, Pissarro, His Life and Work, London, 1980, p. 239 illus.
3. The actual print, after the drawing, is reproduced by R.L. and E.W.
Herbert, 'Artists and Anarchism: Unpublished letters of Pissarro, Signac and Others', The Burlington Magazine, cii (1960), p. 478, Fig. B
4. Brettell & Lloyd, op.cit., cat. no.251, illus.
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