Jacob Abraham Camille Pissarro was born in 1830 in the Virgin Islands. He was born on the island of St. Thomas. The Virgin Islands are in the Caribbean Sea.

Jacob did not like school. Jacob did not like working in his parents’ store. Jacob loved drawing. Jacob loved painting. Jacob loved painting St. Thomas.

St. Thomas is full of color. It has colorful birds. It has colorful trees. It has colorful flowers. Even the sea is colorful.

Jacob painted the trees. He painted the sea. He painted people in the market. He used a lot of colors. He used the colors in new ways. The way he used colors made people think there was something wrong with his eyes.

Jacob’s parents sent him to France to study art. They had relatives in Paris. Jacob lived with his relatives. He went to art school. He began to go by his third name, Camille.

Camille loved art school. He learned a lot. He started a new way of painting. It was called impressionism. His paintings were different. They did not look like photos. They were filled with lots of colors. He painted using hundreds of splotches of colors.

Camille returned to his home on St. Thomas. He stayed for a few years. He worked in his parents’ store. He did not like it. He wanted to paint. His heart was in his art.

Camille left St. Thomas after a few years. He traveled. He went to South America. He went to Central America. He painted what he saw everywhere he went. He was poor. He made a little money doing sketches for people in the street.

In time, Camille went back to France. He worked hard at painting. He worked with other painters. They were also impressionist painters. Many of them were famous. Camille was the oldest of them. They called him the father of impressionism.

Pissarro did not sell many paintings during his lifetime. He was poor. Today, his paintings sell for millions of dollars. They hang in museums all over the world.