The painter Camille Pissarro was born in the West Indies, on the island of St. Thomas, in 1830. Of Portugueuse and French Jewish descent, Pissarro was sent back to France when he was 12, to be educated and groomed for the family business. When he returned to St. Thomas at 17, however, he much preferred sketching by the harbor. Returning to France in 1855, Pissarro became close with Paul Cézanne, Claude Monet, Paul Gauguin, Edgar Degas, and Mary Cassatt. He also influenced them. One of the few Impressionists to devote equal attention to portraits and landscapes, he said, “Everything is beautiful, all that matters is to be able to interpret.” Pissarro’s contributions to the birth of modernism are explored in this exhibition, the artist’s first retrospective in a Swiss museum in the last 60 years. —E.C.