Orovida Camille Pissarro - Later Years

Later Years

For the last quarter century of her life, after her father's death in 1944, Orovida resumed oil painting, with a marked shift in style and choice of subject. Her work became more naturalistic and somewhat more akin to the Pissarro tradition. She melded her Asiatic leanings with a more substantial European look. The result has been compared to dry fresco. Her subject matter during this period includes portraits of family and friends, royalty, and especially all kinds of cats from domestic to wild.

Orovida was a prolific printmaker, producing about 8,000 impressions from 107 etched plates. In a 2001 book, her etchings and family connections are assessed: "Her original, craftsmanlike, modern decorative prints would have earned her a fine reputation regardless of such connections but would not likely have drawn as much attention."

Her mother had established the Pissarro family archive at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, and Orovida played a significant role in developing it.

Orovida never married.

She died on 8 August 1968. In 1969 the Ashmolean Museum put on a memorial show of her paintings, etchings, and drawings. Another posthumous exhibition, Three Generations of the Pissarro Family, was held at the Leicester Gallery. She had participated in a show of that same name in 1943.

Her work may be seen in many prominent collections in Britain, including the British Museum and Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, and in the United States of America, including the Cleveland Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and San Diego Museum of Art.