The French impressionist artist who escaped war ravaged Europe to paint Dulwich and south east London

When the Franco-Prussian war struck in 1870, a struggling painter fled his studio in the Parisian suburbs and boarded a boat sailing across the channel. With his paintbrushes and palettes safely packed away, the refugee artist had his sights set on south east London.

Camille Pissarro, forty-years-old when war came, is today considered a huge figure in the neo-impressionist movement. He loved landscapes but, rather than depicting them in detail, sought to capture their raw essence through colourful spontaneity.

With his mother already living in West Dulwich – 100 Rosendale Road to be precise – Pissarro settled in Norwood. For some artists, exile might have put a strain on their creativity.

But Pissarro’s time in the area; exploring Dulwich, Sydenham and Crystal Palace, saw him produce at least thirteen oil paintings. Many depict landmarks familiar to south Londoners today, including Dulwich College and Crystal Palace Park.

A letter to a friend revealed his deep fondness for the area. He wrote gushingly about the “charming suburb”, where he could study England’s changeable weather of “fog, snow and springtime”.

Camille Pissarro was born on July 10, 1830, on the island of St Thomas now part of the US Virgin Islands. His parents were French so Pissarro was sent to boarding school in Paris, age twelve.

As an adult in France, the painter experimented with landscapes and formed friendships with other notable artists including Monet, Cézanne, and Guillaumin. They shared a disillusionment with the École des Beaux-Arts and its “stifling” rules.

In the 1860s, his career was taking off. Famous French novelist Émile Zola even described him as “one of the three or four true painters of this day”. But it was cut short when Wilhelm I marched his armies into Napoleon’s France.

When Pissarro arrived in Norwood, where he settled, he would have encountered an environment very different from that found today. Whereas now Southwark’s southern tip is decidedly London, Dulwich, Crystal Palace and Norwood were suburban rural enclaves in the 1870s.

In London, he often met with fellow French artist Claude Monet, who lived in Leicester Square and later Kensington.

In a later letter to an English friend, Pissarro wrote: “Monet worked in the parks, whilst I, living at Lower [sic] Norwood, at that time a charming suburb, studied the effects of fog, snow, and springtime.

“We worked from nature, and later on Monet painted in London some superb studies of mist.”

To appreciate his love for the area, you only need to look at Pissarro’s paintings. One of his most famous works from his time in London was of Lordship Lane Station – opened in 1865 and finally closed in 1954.

The station was located at Lordship Lane’s southern end – next to the Horniman Museum and Gardens. In the painting, a train pulls away across swathes of fields that are notably devoid of people.

Then there was the painting of Dulwich College – a short walk away from Pissarro’s Norwood Home. In 2019, the piece briefly returned to the Dulwich Picture Gallery to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the famous school.

In 1871, he painted the Crystal Palace which had been moved from Hyde Park to Sydenham in in 1852. In this small oil painting, Pissarro relegated the behemoth structure to the left of the canvas, dedicating more space to the middle-class families who paraded along the pavement.

In the summer of 1871, Pissarro returned to his home in France. Tragically he discovered that, of the 1,500 paintings he’d done over twenty years, all but forty had been destroyed.

Throughout the rest of his career, Pissarro remained highly influential in the art world. He became a mentor to the likes of Cézanne, Seurat, Gauguin. Van Gogh reportedly considered him a father figure.

But despite being respected by his peers, Pissarro often found it hard to sell his work, particularly when the French economy faltered in the early 1880s. In later life, he even abandoned neo-impressionism, saying the system was too artificial.

Nonetheless, Pissarro is today revered as a major figure in the history of impressionism. His time in south London is meanwhile considered an important juncture in a sparkling career. He died in Paris in 1903, aged 73.