Soleil couchant à Ivry

1870s

Painting alongside Pissarro and Cézanne

In the 1870s the three friends — Guillaumin, Pissarro and Cézanne — often paint in each other's company; for a time the studios of Guillaumin and Cézanne on the Île Saint-Louis in Paris are next door to each other.

1872

Back at work; visits to Pissarro in Pontoise

Forced to return to his job, he keeps painting and often visits Pissarro in Pontoise; in September Pissarro writes to Antoine Guillemet that Guillaumin has just spent several days with them — painting by day and ditch-digging in the evening — and admires his courage.

1873

Cézanne portrays him in an etching

In 1873 Cézanne makes the only etchings of his career; one of them depicts Guillaumin.

1874

The first Impressionist exhibition

Shows three landscapes at the first Impressionist exhibition, among them “Sunset at Ivry”, whose motif echoes Monet's “Impression, Sunrise”; he is a member of the Société anonyme des artistes peintres, sculpteurs et graveurs from the start. He later takes part in the exhibitions of 1877, 1880, 1881, 1882 and 1886 (other accounts say in all but the second, of 1876).