The Honest Eye: Camille Pissarro’s Impre

Join Clarisse Fava-Piz, Dr. Claire Durand-Ruel Snollaerts, and Dr. Nerina Santorius, co-curators of The Honest Eye: Camille Pissarro’s Impressionism for a conversation offering a behind-the-scenes look at the making of this groundbreaking exhibition. The curators will share insights into Pissarro’s life and legacy, from his Caribbean roots to his pivotal role in shaping the Impressionist movement, and discuss how they brought together more than 80 works from around the world to present the first major U.S. retrospective of Pissarro in over 40 years. Learn how curatorial decisions, research, and Pissarro’s own letters informed the exhibition’s themes, narrative, and design.

Although the term “Impressionism” often evokes images of lively Parisian cafés and grand boulevards, Impressionist colleagues Camille Pissarro (b. St. Thomas, 1830) and Francisco Oller (b. Puerto Rico, 1833) possessed strong familial, professional, and personal connections to the Caribbean. Pissarro, an immigrant to France who never relinquished his foreign citizenship and Oller, a peripatetic, transatlantic traveler, were both born in the Caribbean on islands that today constitute territories of the present-day United States. This lecture explores the impact of their Caribbean roots on their respective artistic trajectories examining how the aesthetics and ideology of French Impressionism were transmitted across the Atlantic as a result of their creative exchange.

Camille Pissarro is celebrated for his deeply human vision of nature—a lived-in landscape where people work, dwell, and leave their mark. This idea of a “gardened earth” is both ancient and, surprisingly, still radical today. Join horticulturist and garden designer Kevin Philip Williams of Denver Botanic Gardens to explore how Pissarro’s impressionistic landscapes continue to shape and challenge contemporary ideas of wildness, cultivation, and beauty in modern garden design.

Kevin Philip Williams is a naturalistic gardener who collaborates with active and passive materials to create dynamic and challenging worlds. His unique style combines bioregional plant palettes, a hardcore punk ethos, and post-human aesthetics to craft wild and captivating spaces. Kevin is currently the Manager of Horticulture for Denver Botanic Gardens where he stewards the Steppe Garden, Conservation Garden, Lilac Collection, Dwarf Conifer Collection, Josephine Streetscape, and the Willow Glade in Celebration of Brandon Mandelbaum. Kevin’s extensive work with Denver Botanic Gardens has also led to the creation of celebrated public gardens throughout the city, including SummerHome Garden, the Denver Art Museum Sensory Garden and Alien Dream Worlds at Meow Wolf Convergence Station.

Kevin was a Gardener on The High Line in Manhattan and studied as a Horticulture Intern at Brooklyn Botanic Garden. He holds a MS degree in Public Horticulture from the Longwood Graduate Program at the University of Delaware and a BA degree in The History and Philosophy of Science from Bard College.

In the two decades following photography’s invention around 1839, a group of French painter-photographers embraced and advanced the new medium’s artistic potential. This formative generation, which included Gustave Le Gray, Charles Nègres, and Eugène Cuvelier, elevated the craft and critical dialogue swirling around photography, a medium many felt was better suited to science, industry, and commerce than art. This lecture by Dr. April M. Watson, Senior Curator, Photography at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, will explore the significance of these artists and the debates they sparked as they helped set the stage for the radical innovations brought about by Impressionism.

Enjoy these special Members-only Mornings and see Pissarro's Impressionism before the museum opens to the public on select Saturday mornings. Advance ticket purchase and timed-entry reservation required.

Be among the first to see the exhibition during special preview hours just for members! Pissarro’s Impressionism will feature beautiful landscapes, cityscapes, still lifes, and figure paintings, showcasing the breadth of Pissarro, widely known as the “Father of Impressionism” and the various influences that shaped his practice.

Advance reservations recommended.

Enjoy a 60-minute docent-led tour of Pissarro offered every Sunday and Thursday, November 2, 2025 – January 22, 2026.

Discover the artworks of Camille Pissarro, known as the "father of Impressionism," in this tour that traces five decades of the artist's career. Follow the evolution of Pissarro's practice from his early years in the Caribbean and South America, to his time in France through the development of Impressionism and its transformations at the turn of the 1900s.

With Pissarro s Impressionism as a springboard, the Perspectives on Pissarro program series offers a fresh take on the exhibition, the artist, and his world.

Join curators, art historians, and a horticulturalist as they share insights into Pissarro s work and the natural landscapes that inspired him. Register for individual sessions or enjoy a discount for the full series.

The Honest Eye: Camille Pissarro’s Impressionism is the first major U.S. retrospective of Camille Pissarro, known as "the first impressionist," in over 40 years. The exhibition will present an overview of the artist’s illustrious career and examine his singular role within the Impressionist movement, bringing together more than 80 paintings from nearly 50 international museums and private collections, alongside six works from the Denver Art Museum's holdings.

Born on the island of St. Thomas in what was then the Danish West Indies (now the U.S. Virgin Islands) to French Jewish parents, Pissarro spent time in Caracas and La Guaira, Venezuela, before settling in Paris in 1855. There, he became acquainted with a group of young artists who were challenging the traditional modes of painting and would eventually go on to birth the Impressionist movement. A versatile artist, Pissarro embodied the role of insider, contributing to the establishment of Impressionism as a coherent avant-garde phenomenon while maintaining his artistic independence as he eschewed his peers’ choice of upper-class subject matter to depict scenes of the mundane. Pissarro's Impressionism reflects this dichotomy, while selections from Pissarro’s letters provide insights into his artistic process and worldview more broadly.

Co-organized with the Museum Barberini in Potsdam, Germany, Pissarro's Impressionism will feature landscapes, cityscapes, still lifes, and figure paintings, showcasing the breadth of Pissarro’s oeuvre and the various influences that shaped his practice as he responded to the social and political environment of the day.