28 Apr 08

Madame Pissarro sewing beside a window, 1878 by Camille Pissarro

For the first time, the Ashmolean Museum is touring Japan and Taiwan with the exhibition Camille Pissarro, Family and Friends: Masterworks from the Ashmolean Museum.

The exhibition features paintings, prints, drawings, watercolours, and letters from one of the Oxford museum’s treasured collections, the Pissarro Family Archive.

It will start in Takamatsu City Museum of Art and travel to the National Palace Museum, Taipei, the Museum Eki Kyoto, Kyoto, the Daimaru Museum in Tokyo and the Iwaki City Art Museum in Fukushima before finishing in spring 2009.

The Pissarro Archive in the Ashmolean Museum is the largest single resource for the study of Impressionism in the world. It was presented to the Museum by the family of Camille Pissarro’s eldest son, and now numbers several thousand items. Among the most important are a dozen oil paintings by Camille, covering the whole range of his output, as well as several hundred drawings and an important group of prints by the artist, often described as the ‘Father of Impressionism’.

The exhibition includes masterpieces by Camille, such as View from my Window, Eragny-sur-Epte, his most successful experiment in the pointillist style, and Mme Pissarro sewing beside a Window, an intimate portrait of his wife absorbed in a domestic task. Numerous works by Camille’s contemporaries and predecessors, are also on display, as well as a major group of paintings by his son Lucien.

Christopher Brown, Director of the Ashmolean, said: ‘Touring the Pissarro exhibition in Japan reflects the Ashmolean’s commitment to creating cross-cultural relationships. We are extremely grateful for this unique opportunity to present one of the greatest collections from the Ashmolean to new audiences across Japan and Taiwan, and to share our exciting plans for the future of Europe’s first public Museum.’

Supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund, the Ashmolean is currently undergoing a major £61 million development to build on its strengths as a world-class museum of art and archaeology. The completion of the external frame of the new extension, designed by architect Rick Mather, was celebrated in February with a topping-out ceremony. The new building is due to open late in 2009.