"The Marriage of Opposites", by Alice Hoffman

When I'm spending time in my studio, I often like to listen to an audiobook. Most recently, I savoured The Marriage of Opposites, by Alice Hoffman, a work of historical fiction that tells the story of the family of Camille Pissarro (1830-1903). I have read and enjoyed others of her novels, including The Dovekeepers (2011) and The Museum of Extraordinary Things (2014).

Pissarro is my favourite of the Impressionist and post-Impressionist painters. I especially like his later work, including those wonderful street scenes of Paris. I enjoyed learning about the influence of his family and his birthplace on his work and his career.

The Boulevard Montmartre on a Winter Morning, Camille Pissarro, 1897
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Pissarro was born on the island of St. Thomas, now part of the U.S. Virgin Islands. Hoffman cleaves closely to the actual history of this family, enriching it with vivid native folklore and vibrant descriptions of the plant and animal life of this tropical isle. Hoffman describes St. Thomas as a magical place, influenced by its native Creole culture and its history of piracy, home to a community of Jewish exiles from Portugal and Spain as well as African slaves, all under the relatively benign rule of Denmark. The main character in the story is Rachel, mother of Camille and his many siblings.

One of the aspects of Pissarro's life that I learned about in the afterword to the novel was his exile in England during the Franco-Prussian war, 1870-71. From Wikipedia:

"When Pissarro returned to his home in France after the war, he discovered that of the 1,500 paintings he had done over 20 years, which he was forced to leave behind when he moved to London, only 40 remained. The rest had been damaged or destroyed by the soldiers, who often used them as floor mats outside in the mud to keep their boots clean. It is assumed that many of those lost were done in the Impressionist style he was then developing, thereby 'documenting the birth of Impressionism.'"

You can read a review of "The Marriage of Opposites" in The Guardian.