April

Here's a painting for the new month – April, Epping by Lucien Pissarro, painted in 1894, a few years after the artist and his wife had settled in England. It shows a landscape somewhere near the small semi-suburban house where the Pissarros lived in Epping. There is nothing very distinguished about either the painting or its subject, but what struck me about it was Pissarro's use of cleverly modulated dabs of different colours, in a manner similar to the 'divisionism' of Seurat and Signac, with whom Pissarro had associated before leaving France. This took me back to art classes at my grammar school, when I was around 11 and 12. The teacher, a youngish, dark-haired woman whose name I have forgotten, was apparently on a mission to teach her young charges to paint in something very like a divisionist manner, applying little dabs of different colours placed together so as to give the impression of another colour altogether (like the oranges, mauves and blues that create the shadow of a tree in the left foreground of April, Epping). As you may imagine, her mission was doomed to failure, and even I, who loved to paint and draw, found myself struggling with this strange way of doing things. As I recall it, the teacher began to take a more relaxed approach in time, and I was able to paint more freely. As for my next art teacher, he was certainly encouraging, but inclined to, what shall we say, excessively affectionate behaviour towards his favourite pupils – but that is another story...