Born in St. Thomas in the West Indies (Virgin Islands) where his father was a prosperous merchant, Pissarro spent his youth drawing and sketching. By the age of 20, convinced of his vocation as an artist, Pissarro and a Danish artist friend traveled and worked in Venezuela, where he set up his first studio in Caracas. Arriving in Paris in 1855, attracted to the landscape work of Corot, he began painting and sketching along the Seine in small towns and villages near Paris. Enrolling at a small independent art school called the Academy Suisse where Monet and Cezanne also briefly studied, Pissarro now met like minded artists in the circle of Edward Monet. By 1873 he and his Impressionist colleagues finally abandoned the Salon, a move which gave birth to the first of the Impressionist exhibitions in 1874. Pissarro was the only painter of the Impressionist group who participated in all eight of the ground breaking Impressionist exhibitions held in Paris between 1874 and 1886. He acted as the principal organizer of the exhibition, which opened in the photographer Nadar's studio in April of 1874. It was also Pissarro who drafted the first convention incorporating the group then calling themselves the Anonymous Society of Artists (Societe Anonyme des Artistes). Consequently, Pissarro was regarded as the central figure of the group. Always searching for new means of expression, Pissaro was one of the most innovative of the Impressionists. A self-effacing, kindly man, Pissarro experienced chronic problems selling his paintings and supporting his family. (He had eight children, three of whom died). But he never gave up, pursuing his principles doggedly, insisting on his freedom to experiment in order to create afresh.