Pissaro's Childhood

He was sent to Paris at age 12 to a small boarding school where the director saw his great interest in the arts advising him to spend his time in his hometown drawing coconut trees. This advice was taken into heart by the then young Pissarro when he returned to St. Thomas in 1874 that he spent all his free time, sketching and drawing coconut trees and many other exotic plant life. He also develop a keen ability to capture daily life around him such as the donkeys that frequent the streets, women carrying their laundry and washing them on the many beaches and many more. This early stage in his artistic life developed his trait of being a simple and sincere observer and that in turn is shown in his art. As he grew older, his father sent him to the docks to supervise all arrivals into their store. He took with him a sketchbook and recorded the daily life amongst the busy docks while the cargo was being unloaded waiting for them to finish work. He captured the sailboats on the seas as well as the landscape and the people who live and work around the said area, a place where his interest into the arts grew day by day. The young man unable to convince his parents to let him devote his time to his avocation ran away from his home with a Danish painter from Copenhagen, named Fritz Melbye whom he met while sketching on the docks. They sailed to Venezuela where he was caught saying “ Bolted to Caracas to escape the bondage of bourgeois life.”