Camille Pissarro, 'Portrait of Félix Pissarro', 1881

Camille Pissarro subtly captures the gawky shyness of his seven-year-old son, Félix-Camille (1874–1897). The young boy looks slightly anxiously away from us in this three-quarter view. He seems to be withdrawing behind his curtain of long hair, peering uncertainly from beneath his fringe. Hunching his head away from the high back of the chair, he shrinks his shoulders down into his dark top. His arms are folded together in a defensive pose. Yet he also has a strong sense of presence. Pissarro created this by placing his son at an angle against the flat background and by the use of deep shadows behind the chair.

This small, intimate painting makes for an affecting image. Perhaps it reflects the child’s apparent reluctance to sit for his father, rather than the artist’s positioning of the model. The picture proves Pissarro’s interest in painting ordinary people in their natural settings without distractions or, as Renoir put it, ‘artifice or grandeur’.

Pissarro was one of the founding members of the Impressionist movement. Here, he applied the paint with a myriad of tiny dabs and brushstrokes. Flecks of white add highlights and brightness to the picture. The colours also influence the mood and intensify our sense of the child’s presence. The purple of the beret and the dark pinks on the knotted neck scarf pick up some of the hues in his hair. They also draw attention to the slight pout on his lips. Meanwhile, the blue and black flecks in the green wallpaper chime with the colours in his eyes.

Félix-Camille, known to his family as Titi, was the third son of Camille Pissarro and his wife Julie. He was his father’s favourite subject. This portrait is one of several paintings and drawings of him. Pissarro thought Félix-Camille was the most talented of his seven children, of whom six became artists. He was a painter, engraver and caricaturist, working under the pseudonym of Jean Roch. Sadly, his promising career was cut short. He died of tuberculosis in 1897 at the age of 24 while living in Kew, England.

This painting is signed and dated ‘1881’ in the top-left corner. Another of Pissarro’s children, Ludovic Rodolph, appears in The Little Country Maid (Tate, London), which he made the following year.