Pissarro and Cezanne : self portrait (1873) and portrait of Cezanne (1874) by Camille

One day in 1863, Frédéric Bazille was on his way to the studio he shared with Renoir in Batignolles. He was accompanied by two other painters whose acquaintance he had just made. On entering the studio, Bazille called out to Renoir: “I have brought along two fine recruits!”. Certainly he did not know then how true these words would prove to be, for these “fine recruits” were none other than Paul Cézanne and Camille Pissarro. From that day on, they would share the adventure of those artists who would become the “Impressionists”, and they would take part in the group’s first exhibition in 1874, at the studio of the photographer Nadar.

Cézanne and Pissarro had first met two years previously, at the Académie de Charles Suisse in Paris. Soon a close bond of friendship and collaboration developed between the two artists.

Cézanne found in Pissarro the same rejection of tradition and academic training which characterised his own work. He later wrote about his friend: “He had the good fortune to be born in the West Indies, where he learned how to draw without masters”.

Pissarro, too, immediately recognised Cézanne’s genius. In a letter to his son Lucien, he recalled: “It was such an inspiration when in 1861, Oller and I went to see Cézanne at the Académie Suisse. That strange Provençal was painting academic studies that were the laughing stock of all those sterile students in the school…”

For morthan twenty years, until 1885, Cézanne and Pissarro were to work and experiment together, forming a genuine “pair” within the Impressionist group.

from and read more http://goo.gl/iQsrz
and also here http://goo.gl/XsFwZ
and here http://goo.gl/le0Q6