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Lucien Pissarro was the eldest son of the impressionist painter Camille Pissarro and was, together with Walter Sickert, a friend and admirer of Edgar Degas, a living link between the very different worlds of the French impressionist painters and that of Camden Town. He settled permanently in London in 1890; married an Englishwoman, Esther Bensusan; and until 1900, concentrated mainly on wood-engraving for illustrated books published by their own Eragny Press—which was named after the location of his father’s studio at Éragny-sur-Epte, on the northwestern outskirts of Paris. Pissarro had painted regularly in Devon since spring 1913, and in 1916 he became a British citizen. In 1919, Frank Rutter, the art critic for the Sunday Times and a proponent of the impressionists, declared that Pissarro was among a handful of artists who “will give English painting European importance.”

Gallery label for A Decade of Gifts and Acquisitions (Yale Center for British Art, 2017-06-01 - 2017-08-13)