Of the 1879 exhibition Le Figaro wrote: "Five or six lunatics, one of them a woman - a collection of unfortunates tainted by the folly of ambition - have met here to exhibit their works .... What a terrifying spectacle is this of human vanity stretched to the verge of dementia. Someone should tell M. Pissaro forcibly that trees are never violet, that the sky is never the colour of fresh butter, that nowhere on earth are things to be seen as he paints them ... " - Quoted by THE OXFORD COMPANION TO ART, 1970