Ben Uri Research Unit

Born: 1893 Epping, England

Died: 1968 London, England

Other name/s: Orovida

Biography

Orovida Pissarro was born on 8 October 1893 in Epping, Essex, England, the only daughter of the Jewish émigré painter Lucien Pissarro, and granddaughter of the Impressionist painter Camille Pissarro. She began drawing and painting at an early age and was the first woman in the Pissarro family to become a professional artist. She lived and worked predominantly in London, where she was a prominent member of several British arts clubs and societies. Even though painting was evidently 'in her blood', her mother sent her to study music instead, fearing Orovida might suffer financially in the future as a fine artist. She attended Norland Place School, Notting Hill. She first learned to paint in the Impressionist style from her father and briefly studied with Walter Sickert in 1913; however, she soon discovered that formal art education did not interest her. A year later she began experimenting with etching, her first series of seven plates were printed on her grandfather's press. In 1919 her drawings were published in the modernist publication, Art and Letters, among John Nash's and Isaac Rosenberg's sketches. In 1921 she held a joint exhibition with the French artist Marie Laurencin at the Weyhe Gallery in New York, where her prints were sold among such established names as J. A. M. Whistler and Charles Meryon. She was also aided by British art historian, Campbell Dodgson, who not only praised her works but also ensured that they were represented in UK public collections. Early on she became absorbed with the study of animals at London Zoo, depicting them in the style of their countries of origin combined with modernist elements, such as daring perspective and unconventional composition. Her early works in tempera are typically painted on delicate materials, such as fine-woven linen and silk.

Throughout her career, Orovida always remained outside mainstream British art movements; she was greatly influenced by an exhibition of Chinese Paintings and Japanese Screens held at the British Museum in 1924 and developed a personal style that combined elements of Japanese, Chinese, Persian, and Indian art. She remarked that she found Eastern art to be free from the constraints of reality from which the European avant-garde sought to break away. Her rejection of both Impressionism and her surname - she was known simply as Orovida - reflected her wish to achieve independence from the painting legacy of the Pissarro dynasty. However, she remained proud of the family connection and in 1943 participated in an exhibition entitled Three Generations of the Pissarro Family at the renowned Leicester Galleries, London (a further show of this name was mounted in 1973). During the Second World War, she had to abandon her London studio for the countryside where she helped on the land and she took refuge at John Bekassy's home in Thurston, Suffolk during the Blitz. It was during this period that she took up oil painting again due to a shortage of eggs (and hence, tempera) and shifted towards contemporary subjects, such as scenes of rural and postwar urban life. During her artistic career, Orovida produced over 8,000 prints from 107 etched plates. She first exhibited with the Royal Academy in 1917 and she regularly sent in both black and white etchings and works in colour between 1931 and 1940. She also showed with the Women's International Art Club, the Royal Society of British Artists, Ben Uri Art Gallery (between 1934 and 1956) and with London's Redfern, O'Hana and Bowmore Galleries, among others.

Orovida remained active until the end of her life, while also developing and maintaining the Pissarro family archive, established by her parents in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Orovida Pissarro died at home in London, England on 8 August 1968. The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, held a memorial exhibition in 1969, while her work has continued to be shown commercially by the Stern Pissarro Gallery which represents the artists of the Pissarro dynasty. In 1992 Orovida was the subject of a PhD thesis, Orovida Pissarro: Painter and Print-Maker with A Catalogue Raisonné of Paintings by K. L. Erickson (University of Oxford). Orovida's works can be found in UK public collections, including the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, Ben Uri Collection and the Manchester Art Gallery. Her portraits by artists Carel Weight (1957) and Clara Klinghoffer (1962) are held at the Tate and Ben Uri Collection respectively. The latter work featured in Ben Uri's centenary exhibition, Out of Chaos, held in the East Wing, Somerset House, during 2015.

Related books

Gladys Engel Lang and Kurt Lang, Etched in Memory: The Building and Survival of Artistic Reputation (University of Illinois Press, 2001)
John Rewald ed., Camille Pissarro: Letters to His Son Lucien (Da Capo Press, 1995)
K. L. Erickson, Doctoral Thesis, University of Oxford, 1992
A Catalogue of Etchings and Aquatints by Orovida, exhibition catalogue (Oxford: Ashmolean Museum, 1969)
Thomas Bodkin, 'Portrait of Orovida', Birmingham Daily Post, 5 June 1957, p. 5
'Exhibitions of the Week', The Athenaeum, 17 October 1919, p. 1040

Public collections

Related organisations

Leicester Galleries (regular exhibitor)
Royal Academy (regular exhibitor)

Selected exhibitions

The Orovida Camille Pissarro Collection, online exhibition, Stern Pissarro Gallery (2020)
'Out of Chaos - Ben Uri: 100 Years in London, Inigo Rooms, KCL, East Wing, Somerset House (2015)
Recent Acquisitions 2001-2006, Ben Uri Gallery, London (2006)
The Ben Uri Story from Art Society to Museum, Phillip's Auctioneers, London (2001)
Orovida. Orovida Pissarro: Paintings, Leicester Galleries (1973)
Three Generations of the Pissarro Family, Leicester Galleries (1973)
Orovida Pissarro: Retrospective Exhibition, Ashmolean Museum (1969)
Orovida: Paintings and Etchings, Leicester Galleries (1967)
Orovida Pissarro. Retrospective exhibition of paintings and etchings, Leicester Galleries (1965)
Ben Uri Art Society, Tercentenary Exhibition of Contemporary Anglo-Jewish Artists (1956)
Ben Uri Art Gallery, 40th Anniversary Exhibition: Paintings, Drawings, Sculpture (1956)
Orovida: Recent Paintings, Redfern Gallery (1952)
Ben Uri Art Society, Festival of Britain: Anglo-Jewish Exhibition, 1851-1951, Art Section, Portman Street (1951)
Ben Uri Art Society, The Artist: Self-Portrait and Environment (1951)
Ben Uri Art Society, Summer Exhibition of Paintings, Sculptures and Drawings by Contemporary Artists (1944)
Three Generations of the Pissarro Family, Leicester Galleries (1943)
Ben Uri Art Society, Annual Exhibition of Works by Jewish Artists (1937)
Ben Uri Art Society, Annual Exhibition of Works by Jewish Artists (1936)
Opening of the Ben Uri Jewish Art Gallery and an Exhibition of Works by Jewish Artists, Woburn House (1934)
Paintings by Orovida, Leicester Galleries (1935)
Joint exhibition with Marie Laurencin, Weyhe Gallery, New York (1921)
Etchings and Drawings by Orovida, Adelphi Galleries (1919)
Royal Academy exhibitions (1917, 1931, 1935, 1936, 1939, 1950, 1955, 1956, 1957, 1958, 1960, 1963, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1967)

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Orovida Pissarro]