By Sarah Hammond, Curatorial Assistant
Having worked on our summer exhibition Pissarro’s People with Rick Brettell and the Clark curatorial staff for the last year, I am filled with eager anticipation as we count down the days to the official opening.
Over the last several weeks, our intrepid preparators have been hard at work: they have painted walls, installed pictures, cut labels, and aimed lights, all to make Camille’s characters come to life.
As I’ve wandered through the in-progress galleries, dodging tool carts and light cans, I have been struck by how colorful our show is. To be sure, in an exhibition of works by an Impressionist painter, color unsurprisingly plays a major role, and Pissarro’s People is no different.
And while Pissarro’s blues, crimsons, and greens seem to radiate forth from each canvas—thousands of repeated dabs, dots, and strokes appear woven together, like threads of a tapestry—it is not just the hues of the paints that are so vibrant.
The people in the pictures themselves form a colorful crew, a cast of distinct roles. The favorite child, the dreamy maid, the exhausted worker, the impassioned radical, the prudent shopper: all mingle together in the Clark’s galleries, seeming to fill our rooms with a bustling din as each painting, drawing, and print vies for our attention.
I hope you’ll have a chance to visit the exhibition this summer, to meet and greet Pissarro’s colorful people!
For more information about Pissarro’s People, check out the special website dedicated to the exhibition.
Image credits:
Camille Pissarro (1830–1903), The Marketplace, 1882. Gouache on paper, 31 3/4 x 25 1/2 in. (80.6 x 64.8 cm). Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Private collection, L.1984.54.1
Camille Pissarro (1830–1903), Apple Harvest, 1888. Oil on canvas, 24 x 29 1/8 in. (61 x 74 cm). Dallas Museum of Art. Munger Fund, 1955.17.M
