Orovida Camille Pissarro - Early Works

Early Works

Orovida never was a part of Britain's mainstream art movements. She became the first female professional artist in the Pissarro family, and the family's first artist of her generation.

In 1921 she and French artist Marie Laurencin exhibited in a joint exhibition.

A 1924 British Museum exhibition of Chinese painting had a great influence on her artistic sensibilities. Despite her father's disappointment, Orovida, in her 20s, abandoned Impressionism and developed an unusual decorative style inspired by Chinese as well as Japanese, Persian and Indian art. This was partly due to a desire to distinguish herself from her family's strong Impressionist legacy. She further accomplished this by dropping her last name, wishing to be known simply as Orovida for the rest of her life. (Her uncle Georges Henri Manzana Pissarro, similarly, had obfuscated his name, signing his work simply with his grandmother's maiden name, Manzana.) Despite distancing of herself from the family's fame, she remained proud of the Pissarro legacy.

Her spurning of Impressionism was more than just distancing herself from the Pissarros. She considered Western art to be in competition with photography, while Eastern art was more suited to her independent nature. She never visited the Far East; her inspiration came solely from the works she had seen in museums and elsewhere.

Orovida painted with thin washes of gouache or tempera on silk, linen, paper, and gold leaf. Her paintings as well as her etchings depict primarily Asian subject matter. Her most frequent subjects were animals, especially tigers and horses, which she depicted in a decorative, Asiatic, stylized, linear manner. Another favorite subject was Mongolian horsemen hunting wild animals; others included Persian princes and African dancers.