At the age of 20, Armand Guillaumin had saved enough money to begin attending evening classes at the Academie Suisse, a prestigious art school in the centre of Paris. Known for being an institution of nonconformists (there were no examinations, grades, or rigid instruction) it proved to be a hotbed of future Impressionist artists. While studying at the academy, Guillaumin became particularly close to Camille Pissarro and Paul Cezanne, with whom he would remain friends for the rest of their lives. 

For the next decade, he continued to paint with Cezanne and Pissarro, but was always hampered by his need to work. However, by 1874 he was a well enough known avant-garde painter that he was invited to participate as an original member of the First Impressionst Exhibition. While Guillaumin’s participation in this seismic exhibition has been overshadowed by, for example, Monet, his work from this period is striking. One of his paintings that now hangs in the Musée d’Orsay, painted a year before in 1873, was shown at the exhibition and testified to his prodigious talent and nuanced understanding of light. That he was able to create such an accomplished work despite his continued full-time work as a clerk, and without the same degree of training as his contemporaries, is nothing short of remarkable.

Armand Guillaumin occupies a distinctive yet often overlooked position within the history of Impressionism. While he is by no means an unknown artist, and his works are today in almost every major collection of French painting, his celebrity has not reached the heights of his direct contemporaries like Monet or Renoir. Yet it should not be forgotten that he was an Impressionist who was there ‘from the beginning’ and whose style was marked by vigorous colour, an unwavering commitment to painting en plein air, and an unusual independence of spirit.