Camille Pissarro: The Train, 1897

Turnham Green station was opened on 1 January 1869 by the London and South Western Railway, running from Kensington Olympia to Richmond. In 1877 the District Line was extended, and two years later a branch line to Ealing was added. In 1883 trains also began running to Hounslow. * After a gradual decline, that track was finally lifted in 1965.

Lucien Pissarro lived at 62 Bath Road from 1897–1902. His father Camille (1830–1903), was called “the dean of the Impressionist painters” for his role as the oldest in the group and for encouraging the other artists. He was a founding member of the Impressionists and the only one to have exhibited at all eight Paris exhibitions, from 1874 to 1886. He last visited his son, who had settled permanently in England in 1890 (moving to Bath Road in 1897), between May and July of 1897 and painted various scenes of Chiswick – seven in all, including this one of a small steam train, Puffing Jinny, on a line that no longer exists. He also painted cricket matches on the field at Stamford Brook, allotments alongside the railway line, and ladies and children in gardens. He set up his easel on a flat roof of the house, which apparently can still be seen from Welstead Way.

WA.P.Arch.179 Photograph of Camille Pissarro Painting in Bath Road
Image © Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford.

Acknowledgements: Private Collection

* Sandra Grant & D W Budworth, Bedford Park, Pictures from the Past, Bedford Park Society 2013. See also Bedford Park Residents’ Association. D W Budworth, “The District and Piccadilly Lines” in Chiswick and Brentford Local History Journal, 2014