What the impressionist painter Camille Pissarro saw in London
In the early 1870s, an émigré painter watched from a railway footbridge as a steam locomotive left a station on the outskirts of London. His name was Camille Pissarro and he was developing a style of plein air painting that would soon be called "Impressionism".Pissarro and another émigré, Claude Monet, remained in London for only a few months. In April 1874, they were among the painters who held the first Impressionist exhibition in Paris, the subject of a retrospective that will run until July 14 at the Musée d'Orsay and will open on September 8 at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DCBut London was one of their earliest muses. Monet painted the River Thames and the Palace of Westminster, among other central landmarks, while Pissarro captured suburban scenes where houses and r...