This autumn the Ashmolean Museum will present a major exhibition of works by the great Impressionist, Camille Pissarro and subsequent members of the Pissarro family. It will include a comprehensive selection of the Museum's Pissarro Family Archive, which ranks amongst the most valuable resources for the study of the Impressionist movement and their influence in England. Additionally, the exhibition will give a rare and insightful view of the Pissarro family's domestic life spanning three generations.

The Pissarro Family Gift to the Ashmolean Museum, made by the widow and daughter of Lucien Pissarro in 1950, is one of the most extensive and important bequests the Museum has ever received. It included a number of oil paintings by Camille Pissarro, his eldest son Lucien, and Lucien's daughter Orovida, as well as drawings, sketchbooks, letters, and other documentary material.

An endearing and unusual aspect of the Archive is the number of family portraits. Unknown for their portraiture, it is remarkable to discover that the human figure occupied so prominently within the work of Camille and Lucien throughout their careers. The Pissarros also painted many landscapes of where the family lived and worked, they drew friends and visitors who came to their homes, usually in informal or intimate settings. The principal technique of Impressionism, painting from nature outdoors, meant that Camille in particular frequently painted the houses and gardens near his homes, a practice that Lucien continued when he moved to London in 1890.

Highlights of the exhibition are masterpieces by Camille such as View from my Window, Eragny-sur-Epte, his most successful experiment in the pointillist style, and Mme Pissarro sewing beside a Window, an intimate portrait of his wife absorbed in a domestic task. Also on display are several works by Camille from private collections that have rarely been exhibited in public, including a portrait in oils of Lucien. Among the paintings by Lucien are views of the house and garden at The Brook, Hammersmith, where he settled in 1900, and portraits of his parents, wife, and daughter. The concluding section is dominated by Carel Weight's extraordinary portrait of Orovida at home, which she commissioned in 1956.

The Pissarro Family Gift was supplemented in 2003 by the acquisition under the Acceptance in Lieu (AIL) scheme of a further body of material. This included over 600 items, including etchings and drawings by Camille Pissarro, Lucien and Orovida, as well as works illustrating Lucien Pissarro's involvement with the Private Press movement in England. The Acceptance in Lieu (AIL) scheme enables owners to offer items to the nation instead of paying Inheritance Tax.