Carpe Diem #676, The Orchard

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

This is our last episode of our Impressionism month ... I am a bit sad, but I am also excited, because we start with a new month full of wonder. For this last episode I have chosen a impressionism painting by Camille Pissarro, the father of impressionism, the father of divers impressionism painters.

Camille Pissarro (French: [kamij pisaʁo]; 10 July 1830 – 13 November 1903) was a Danish-French Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist painter born on the island of St Thomas (now in the US Virgin Islands, but then in the Danish West Indies). His importance resides in his contributions to both Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. Pissarro studied from great forerunners, including Gustave Courbet and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot. He later studied and worked alongside Georges Seurat and Paul Signac when he took on the Neo-Impressionist style at the age of 54.

In 1873 he helped establish a collective society of fifteen aspiring artists, becoming the "pivotal" figure in holding the group together and encouraging the other members. Art historian John Rewald called Pissarro the "dean of the Impressionist painters", not only because he was the oldest of the group, but also "by virtue of his wisdom and his balanced, kind, and warmhearted personality". Cézanne said "he was a father for me. A man to consult and a little like the good Lord," and he was also one of Gauguin's masters. Renoir referred to his work as "revolutionary", through his artistic portrayals of the "common man", as Pissarro insisted on painting individuals in natural settings without "artifice or grandeur".

Camille Pissarro (1830-1903)

Pissarro is the only artist to have shown his work at all eight Paris Impressionist exhibitions, from 1874 to 1886. He "acted as a father figure not only to the Impressionists" but to all four of the major Post-Impressionists, including Georges Seurat, Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin.

Credits: Orchard in Bloom, Louveciennes (1872) - Camille Pissarro

This guy is awesome I think and I like his features ... look that beard, those eyes with the wrinkles a great image of him. To me he looks really like a father-figure ... and I had never heard of him, but his paintings I knew ...
And this particular one is one of his masterpieces worth to be honored with a masterpiece haiku ... can I do that? I have to try ..., but let me first look at a few haiku about "the orchard" by other haiku poets. I have found two wonderful haiku written by two modern haiku poets, I couldn't retrieve an e-mail-address, so I credit them (as I always do by the way):

Heavy rain all night—
with closed eyes I see
the orchard, the dripping leaves.

© Billy Collins (From “She was just seventeen”)

Flowering orchard,
born again every year.
I welcome the blossoms

© Herman van Rompuy (former president of the EU)

Well ... I think these haiku are great and really wonderful ... and now I have to write/compose one myself ...

harvesting apples
in the backyard of my granddad
the old orchard

(c) Chèvrefeuille

Credits: The Olive Orchard - Vincent Van Gogh 1889

sweet perfume
harvesting the ripe olives
to make oil

(c) Chèvrefeuille

This was our last episode of Carpe Diem Haiku Kai this month ... it was a pleasure and a joy to be your host (this month together with Jen of Blog It Or Lose It) and I have enjoyed all of your wonderful haiku and tanka and not to forget the beautiful haibun and even sometimes a troiku ... really it was an awesome month. I am proud to be your host, and I feel humble that I may be your host here at CDHK. I am looking forward to our new month of Carpe Diem in which we will become our own "impressionists", because March will be the month of our Haiga Festival.

This episode is open for your submissions tonight at 7.00 PM (CET) and will remain open until March 2nd at noon (CET). I will publish our new episode, companionship, later on.