Ludovic-Rodolphe Pissarro, born in Paris in 1878, was Camille Pissarro’s fourth son, and encouraged by his father he began drawing from nature at an early age. He was familiarly known as Rodo and generally signed his works ‘Ludovic-Rodo’ (or early on in his career, just ‘Rodo’). The impact of Camille’s art and teaching on Ludovic-Rodo Pissarro was obviously considerable, and his artistic production encompassed a wide range of media, including oil painting, tempera, watercolour, gouache, wood engraving, drawing and lithography. He also exhibited regularly at the Salon des Indépendents over a forty year period. In 1894, at the age of sixteen, Ludovic-Rodolphe Pissarro published his first wood engravings in the anarchist journal, Le Pere Peinard, and when Camille left France for the safety of Belgium during the anarchist upheavals of that year Ludovic-Rodolphe Pissarro joined him there. Rodo moved into his first studio in Montmartre with his brother Georges in 1898 and found the night-life of Paris, and the habitués of the cafes, theatres, circuses and cabarets of the area, compelling subjects for his work. With his younger brother Paulémile he met artists such as Kees Van Dongen, Maurice de Vlaminck and Raoul Dufy, and in 1905 he participated in the first Fauve exhibition at the Salon des Indépendents.