s Portrait of Esther - Hull Museums Collections

Portrait of Esther

Lucien PISSARRO Paris 1863 - Somerset 1944 Portrait of Esther, 1893 Oil on canvas Purchased in 1989 using the Ferens Endowment Fund with the aid of grants from the National Art Collections Fund and the MGC/V&A Purchase Grant Fund. Lucien Pissarro, taught to paint by his father, the famous Camile Pissarro (1831-1903), links the French Impressionists with the later generation of English Impressionists. In France he had close contact with Cezanne (1839-1906) and Seurat (1859-91) and took up the pointillist style of applying tiny blobs of paint which intermingle in the spectator's eye to dazzling effect. Painted a year after their marriage, this portrait is of Pissarro's wife Esther Benusan. In the background is a William Morris (1834-96) tapestry, which Pissarro unites with Esther's profile in a mosaic-like pattern.