Camille Pissarro’s role in the formation of a new French style of painting known as Impressionism was integral. Born in St. Thomas of the Virgin Islands to a Portuguese Jewish father, Camille Pissarro always held a great interest in the visual arts. After traveling between the Virgin Islands and France for several years in order to obtain schooling and assist his father’s business, Pissarro finally decided that his artwork was his true calling. Upon returning to France he received training from the prestigious École des Beaux-Arts and the Académie Suisse. The paintings of Camille Pissarro are famous for being included in all eight of the Impressionist Exhibitions that took place in Paris during the height of the movement. The paintings of Camille Pissarro became the start to many of the friendships made with other artists who were beginning to lean toward the new Impressionist style of painting. As new ideas about the sensibilities and aesthetics of art were being formed, Camille Pissarro’s artwork became among the leading examples of the new styles. Because most of the artists who came to be known as the Impressionists were acquantainces, if not close friends, Pissarro is occasionally referred to as the father of Impressionism. In the Impressionism art movement, the oil paintings of Camille Pissarro illustrated all of the tenets that the progressive artists were embracing as they moved away from earlier styles of painting. Camille Pissarro oil paintings were more often than not landscapes with loose brush strokes that provided a loose glimpse or quick first impression of the subject, light, and coloring. The early works of Camille Pissarro were shining examples to the other followers of Impressionism and provided a firm basis of artistic philosophy for his younger contemporaries to follow and adapt to their own styles. What is particularly important regarding the artwork of Camille Pissarro is that viewing the paintings invokes the sense that artistic attempts at accurately portraying a landscape (as perhaps, in a photograph) are insufficient to the experience of the sensations of the landscape itself. In this way, the paintings of Camille Pissarro and his contemporaries found a new way to interact with their viewers by encouraging the audiences to experience the subject, rather than just look at it on a canvas. Some of Camille Pissarro’s famous paintings are located in the most prestigious museums around the world including: The Metropolitan Museum of Art (MoMA) in New York, The British Museum in London, and Musée d’Orsay in Paris. Some of the most recognizable titles of Camille Pissarro’s artwork are: Afternoon Sunshine, Pont Neuf; Boulevard Montmarte, Artist’s Garden, Flooded Sunset, The Harvest (1883), and Lock at Pontoise, among many others. Even from the titles of Pissarro’s paintings, it becomes easily apparent how much focus he devoted to light as an artist. Though light had been a hugely important element in the composition of paintings since the days of Caraveggio and beyond, Pissarro and the Impressionists redefined the use of light as a tool to enhance the impressionist quality of the works which they painted.