In 2030, it is going to be the 200th anniversary of Camille Pissarro’s birth in Charlotte Amalia. One of the goals of this blog is to explore ways to to celebrate this occasion. We want to take this obscure St. Thomas secret and make it a widely celebrated occasion.
Like many merchant families in the 1800s, the Pissarros lived above their store. The picture of the sign on the building where they lived and conducted their business (photo above) is one of the few bits of evidence that Camille Pissarro grew up in St. Thomas and started his career as an artist here.
In the 1830’s St Thomas was a tropical version of a California boomtown during the Gold Rush.
Strategically located on a trade route that formed a triangle between Europe, Latin America and the United States, the island flourished as a free port since the eighteenth century, but competition was cut-throat and the Pissarros were only second-tier businessmen. Merchant sailing ships from a dozen nations anchored in Charlotte Amalie’s harbor to load and unload goods. Pissarro loved to sketch all the activities, but the dollars and cents of it completely eluded him
It was a strange place for a boy who had no interest in commerce to live.
“I wanted my freedom from the start. I did not wish to go to school and would have preferred to walk through the streets of the city, skirting the harbor, making my way to the shore so I could study the waves, sand, birds, light. That was my library.”
“I liked to be with everyday people, watching them work, especially at the docks, where there was a riot of color, and a rush of great excitement every time a ship arrived, for that was the way the world came to us and woke us up with the news and events and people.”
“We had small lives here. Each group stayed to themselves.”
~Quotes from The Marriage of Opposites, by Alice Hoffman. This is a great book if you are interested in the Pissarro family and in particular, Camille Pissarro’s mother, Camille, his family, a scandal and life in St. Thomas. https://www.amazon.com/Marriage-Opposites-Alice-Hoffman/dp/1451693605
Secret St. Thomas 