Camille Pissarro (1830–1903) was one of the leading pioneers of French Impressionism and Neo-Impressionism. As a mentor and teacher he exerted great influence over younger painters, like Paul Cézanne (1839–1906), Paul Gauguin, and Vincent van Gogh.
Pissarro constantly sought to exchange views and ideas with the leading artists of his day. During his formative years as an artist in Paris when he was a private pupil of the teaching staff from the École des Beaux-Arts and Swiss Academy in around 1860 he already got to know not only Paul Cézanne but also Claude Monet and Jean-Baptiste Armand Guillaumin. Guillaumin and Vincent van Gogh subsequently formed a close friendship. Pissarro himself had been a student of Camille Corot, whose figurative works served as models for works by Edgar Degas, Georges Braque, and Pablo Picasso. In 1865, together with Alfred Sisley and Auguste Renoir, Pissarro left the confines of his studio to paint from nature in the forest of Fontainebleau. Like Monet and Renoir, he developed and steadily refined the art of open-air painting, constantly experimenting with increasingly brighter, less broken colors and sketchily applied paint. The paintings he created during this period, like Landscape at Louveciennes, were largely instrumental in the emergence of Impressionism.
Pissarro also cultivated fruitful exchanges with artists outside his own discipline. For example, the author Émile Zola was a prominent admirer of his work. Pissarro regularly attended meetings of Édouard Manet’s “Batignolles Group,” in which painters and critics discussed avant-garde art. After returning from exile in London during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 to 1871, Pissaro engaged in an intensive exchange with Paul Cézanne. Together the two artists developed an increasingly unconventional style of open-air and landscape painting.
Cézanne himself was not only a pugnacious artist, constantly at odds with the Paris art establishment, but he was also frequently misunderstood and derided in his lifetime. Early on in Cézanne’s career Pissarro became a key mentor to him, setting an example for him to follow. Under Pissarro’s guidance and tutelage, Cézanne reflected on the skills he needed and thus refined his use of Impressionist techniques. In the medieval tradition of great artists, Cézanne started off by copying pictures painted by Pissarro, but their relationship soon blossomed into a stimulating give and take, with each artist learning from the other, and they spent hours discussing their views and theories in “Père Pissarro’s” house. “As for Pissarro, he was a father to me, a man to consult and something like the good Lord,”1 Cézanne said. But like all good mentors, Pissarro advised Cézanne not just to produce sterile copies of his (Pissarro’s) works.
Today, Cézanne is regarded as one of the greatest painters in the history of art, even as a precursor for new styles, like Fauvism and Cubism. For example, references to Cézanne are apparent in Henri Matisse’s Fauvist works, and in the summer of 1908 Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso painted geometricized landscapes in L’Estaque, following in Cézanne’s footsteps. The paintings they produced there are heralded as the birth of Cubism. For Henri Matisse, Camille Pissarro was not just inspirational, he was also a valuable advisor, recommending for instance that he study the works of William Turner in London.
At the same time, Pissarro was not just a teacher and mentor, but also forcefully advocated his view of art. As a protest against both the prevailing conservative policy on art and salon juries with antiquated views, Pissarro joined Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir, and others to form an artists’ initiative that organized eight group exhibitions of works by avant-garde painters between 1874 and 1886. The art critic Louis Leroy mockingly derided the members of the group as “Impressionists,” a play on the title of a canvas exhibited by Monet entitled Impression, Sunrise. The term Impressionists duly stuck, sealing a firm place in the history of art for Leroy, though probably not the kind of legacy he would have hoped for. Pissarro, along with Degas, remained a driving force in this community of artists to which he introduced many younger artists including Cézanne, Gauguin, Seurat, and Signac.
However, Pissarro did not just bring together a large number of artists and serve as a precious mentor and teacher to younger artists; he also let them inspire him, the most striking example of this being Georges Seurat, a man almost 30 years his junior. It was Seurat who, after intensive study, painstakingly developed a new technique that would come to be called Neo-Impressionist. In 1885, Paul Signac, one of the most prominent Neo-Impressionists alongside Seurat, brought Camille Pissarro and Georges Seurat together. At the time, Seurat had nearly completed one of his most famous works, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. The painting so impressed Pissarro that he immediately adopted the technique that would later be described as Neo-Impressionist—though not without taking the opportunity to offer his younger fellow artist a few welcome practical tips.
Some people today regard Pissarro as one of the best teachers of painting and regard him as a prototypical mentor, devoting a large proportion of his energy to promoting talented young artists, without ever being too aloof to learn from his protégés and students.
So what can Camille Pissarro teach us about management? What Pissarro and the outstanding group of artists with whom he associated teach us above all is something that is apparent in all disciplines, in all areas of society, and naturally also in the management of organizations: the importance of icons, mentors, teachers, and trusted dialogue partners.
However, we must differentiate here, because by no means everyone who went on to achieve greatness could—or wanted to—fall back on mentors or teachers. Many of them made strides all by themselves. And not everyone has always valued dialogue partners highly: Cézanne himself was very much a loner for lengthy spells of his life. Indeed, his friendship with Pissarro was exceptional. But virtually everybody has had people they looked up to, as countless biographies make clear.
The first and possibly most important lesson of this chapter is that icons were—and still are—a driving force for many great people. Usually mentoring is considered a one-sided relationship, with younger individuals taking their example from people older than themselves, and this is no doubt regularly the case, as with the relationship between Cézanne and Pissarro, for example. But at the same time, Pissarro shows us that a teacher-student relationship can also work the other way around, for he was sufficiently open-minded to draw sustained inspiration from the Neo-Impressionist style of Seurat, who was a full generation younger than Pissarro himself.
Second, although not all the greats made use of the possibilities opened up by having a mentor, very few of those who achieve greatness manage to do so without any teachers or patrons whatsoever. Even Michelangelo had the Medici family and six pontiffs sponsoring him, especially Pope Julius II, who gave Michelangelo some major opportunities in the form of his most challenging assignments. The safe assumption that the Pope and Michelangelo must—at times—have loathed each other is another issue. The fact remains that the Pope did give Michelangelo his support.
Jack Welch frequently reiterated the importance of mentors in shaping his own career and his own life. In so doing, he underscored one very important point: “People, it seems, are always looking for that one right mentor to help them get ahead. But in my experience, there is no one right mentor. There are many right mentors.”2 This is something that many sports stars, artists, scientists, business leaders, and politicians can confirm.
The third lesson is that the importance of inspiring dialogue partners must on no account be underestimated. For many of the artists connected to Pissarro, he was neither a teacher nor a mentor but more of a trusted and—when necessary—critical dialogue partner. At first sight this may seem banal, but its true value emerges at the very latest when we bear in mind the high level of the peers from whom he sought both contact and above all constructive, critical debate.
The discussion group led by Édouard Manet and the corresponding Impressionist circle co-founded by Pissarro pursued this kind of critical dialogue, which is precisely the type of exchange sought by effective managers and takes place on well-run advisory boards. In a nutshell, the best people seek critics. They want their positions, opinions, and theories to be challenged because they know that only the ensuing critical dialogue produces tangibly better solutions. Whether an advisory board or supervisory body is used for this purpose, as is often the case in business, or whether an informal discussion group or valued friends fulfill it, is not important. What really counts is that such discussions take place at all, for they are extremely valuable. In short, competent managers will always deliberately open themselves up to such critical dialogue.
The important thing is that the people involved are independent, and it was just such circles that Pissarro sought out. And independent advice of this kind can not only prove extremely valuable for organizations. The biographies of practically all great historical figures show that they constantly cultivated solid trust with certain individuals and sought an additional opinion or good advice from them.
Good management just happens to be far more commonplace than some people would have us believe. Yet it is—and will continue to remain—important that such meetings of advisory boards or supervisory bodies do not become mere “showcase events” or pleasant, but ultimately ineffective gatherings. Instead, serious critical exchanges need to take place there, though this outcome is by no means self-evident. One thing is clear: the best people definitely make very vigorous efforts to ensure the effectiveness of such bodies and discussion groups.
The examples set out below indicate just how much the brightest business minds have been influenced by advice. In this connection, Fortune magazine asked prominent business leaders: “What was the best advice you ever got?”3 Maybe one or more of the following tips can prove useful to you as well.
Howard Schultz, chairman and CEO of Starbucks: “Recognize the skills and traits you don’t possess, and hire people who have them.”
Warren Buffett, chairman of Berkshire Hathaway: “You’re right not because others agree with you, but because your facts are right.”
Alan G. Lafley, chairman of Procter & Gamble: “Have the courage to stick with a tough job.”
Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group: “Make a fool of yourself. Otherwise you won’t survive.” (This piece of advice came from an entrepreneur Branson had befriended and was intended to highlight a possible strategy for competing against the massive advertising budget of British Airways.)
Andy Grove, former chairman and CEO of Intel: “When ‘everyone knows’ something to be true, nobody knows nothin‘.”
Jack Welch, former chairman and CEO of General Electric: “Be yourself.”
Jim Collins, management author: “The real discipline comes in saying no to the wrong opportunities.”
Peter F. Drucker, pioneering management thinker: “Get good—or get out.” (This is what one boss told a roughly 20-year-old Drucker.)
Ted Turner, founder of CNN: “Start young.”
Hector Ruiz, former chairman and CEO of AMD: “Surround yourself with people of integrity, and get out of their way.”
Herb Kelleher, founder and former chairman and CEO of Southwest Airlines: “Respect people for who they are, not for what their titles are.”
Which dialogue partners do you surround yourself with?
Spend your time being an interested person, not an interesting one.