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Overview
Camille Pissarro (1830-1903) was a pivotal Impressionist artist. Learning much from the older masters Corot and Courbet, with the advent of Impressionism he was mentor to Cézanne and to some extent Renoir - and later Gauguin - and the close artistic companion of Degas. In the 1880s he would be equally influential on the rising stars, Neo-Impressionists Seurat and Signac, himself working convincingly in their Divisionist style. This is an impressive list of names and is testament to an impressive artist and personality.
Although primarily known as a painter, Pissarro was also a relatively prolific printmaker, sometimes working closely with a fellow painter-printmaker in Degas. Probably the greatest Impressionist printmaker other than Degas, the Impressionist style translates convincingly in Pissarro's works - and the same cannot frankly be said for Manet, Renoir and Cézanne, whose prints are essentially valued as inferior, affordable proxies for their paintings.
Combined with his painting was Pissarro's politics, the subject of perhaps excess speculation by left-wing art historian T.J. Clark. Yet it would be wrong to deny the political component of his works. This lithograph is certainly one of his more overtly politicised works, and was edited and published by the famous anarchist journalist and activist Jean Grave as part of L'album de lithographies des Temps Nouveaux (The album of lithographs from The New Times) (1896-1903).
The English title has been rendered variously as The homeless, The vagrants and The vagabonds. It depicts the rural poor of the period: the mother with a small child in arms, the father, slightly hunched with a bag and all the cares in the world over his left shoulder, and the young daughter in patched clothes, all walking in a country road, presumably in search of work, food and shelter. Although the subject of the rural poor had been popular since J.F. Millet in the late 1840s, it received new impetus from anarchist/socialist artists late in the century. The tramp was something of an anarchist icon, often seen - surely romantically - as a nonconformist, but with good reason as a social victim. Other artists who depicted the theme include Maximilien Luce and Henri Cross, both admirers of Pissarro.
See:
The Art Story, 'Camille Pissarro', https://www.theartstory.org/artist-pissarro-camille.htm
Mary Tompkins Lewis, Critical Readings in Impressionism and Post-Impressionism: An Anthology (Oakland, 2007)
Wikipedia, 'Camille Pissarro', https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camille_Pissarro
Dr Mark Stocker Curator, Historical International Art May 2018