NAPLES, Fla. -- If you are creative, having a famous artist for an ancestor can be a burden. Ten descendants of French impressionist Camille Pissarro have found this to be true as they pursued their artistic talents.

That is how Lelia Pissarro, 46, Camille Pissarro's great-granddaughter, recently explained the Pissarro family history at a private gallery, New River Fine Art, here. She spoke before some 50 visitors on a Sunday afternoon.

The gallery is exhibiting "Camille Pissarro: The Four Generations," 150 years of his and his descendants' paintings in differing styles with 45 works on view.

The Pissarro dynasty is the largest and longest-lived in Western art, they say. Their exhibition is well worth seeing for its variety and historical interest.

"Pittsburghers coming in here have asked why they don't have shows like this in Pittsburgh," said John Gillespie, owner of Bondstreet, a former Pittsburgh gallery and now consultant to New River.

Maybe it has to do with gallery friendships leading to exhibitions and a sunny and warm sugary beach less than a mile away.

Lelia Pissarro -- like her father, painter Hugues Claude Pissarro -- began making art at age 4. She was taught by, and lived with, her grandfather, painter Paulemile Pissarro (1884-1972), Camille's youngest son, in Normandy. She later rejoined her parents in Paris.

There have only been two Pissarro women artists, Lelia and Orovida Camille Pissarro (1893-1968), who was the daughter of Camille Pissarro's eldest son, Lucien (1863-1944).

For years Lelia painted in the soft Impressionist style that began 135 years ago with Claude Monet's "Impression -- Sunrise." Her idiom, as seen at New River, was houses at the end of snowy roads and similar bucolic subjects.

But then she rebelled. A vigorous woman, she began to create large, strongly gestural abstracts in the international style. She said she had to be true to herself and completely dismisses her past on her Web site, www.leliapissarro.com.

Lelia's recent work is bold, with handsome swaths of color and added pigments such as gold. She is now absorbed with capturing the effects of light in her canvases.

In 1988, Lelia moved to London and married art dealer David Stern, who had taken over his father's Notting Hill gallery there. Today, Stern runs the gallery in London's St. James Street, maintaining a selection of older Pissarros as well as his wife's work.

In 2003, Lelia, now a mother, survived a double mastectomy. Unlike her ancestors, she said, she never urged her daughters as children to paint. As young adults, they have artistic interests but their mother does not see them becoming painters.

For most visitors to the Naples gallery, the paintings of Camille Pissarro hold the most interest. An 1863 oil on canvas of a country road in winter with trees recalls those of his teacher, J.B. Camille Corot. The show's star is a 1903 oil of a sailboat regatta returning to harbor. Done in his last year, it shows Pissarro had returned to Impressionism with full attention to atmosphere and water. Among his sketches, "Entrance to a Village" has a deftness that could have easily become a painting.

Camille Pissarro (1830-1903) was born on St. Thomas to Portuguese Jews -- his father ran a men's store -- and began painting early. He rejected religion, married a Gentile and moved to France.

Painting in the hamlet of Barbizon, he was influenced by Corot and later, Stern said, had "a clear impact" on his student, the modernist Paul Cezanne.

As an early Impressionist, Pissarro showed with Edouard Manet, Claude Monet and Auguste Renoir. In the 1880s, he adopted the dabbing style of pointillism. A landscapist, he soon returned to light-filled Impressionism.

A remarkable teacher, Pissarro also instructed Paul Gauguin and Vincent Van Gogh early on as well as his own children from childhood.

He was independent and even an anarchist (during the anti-Semitic frame-up of Alfred Dreyfus in the 1890s). He did not follow Paris art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel's marketing advice to gain more commissions, as Monet did. Continuing to exhibit, Pissarro lived in Pontoise and Eragny, north of Paris, and also painted in other picturesque French cities. He had a profound and non-didactic effect on his stellar contemporaries. Today, his works generally sell for less than the famed artists he taught and exhibited with.

Other fine landscapes done over many years at New River include: "Red Roots at Menton" by second son Georges Manzana Pissarro (1871-1961) as well as a landscape of "Sacre-Coeur, Montmartre," female nudes and watercolors by fourth son Ludovic-Rodo Pissarro (1878-1952).

Paulemile Pissarro did bold landscapes and a powerful "Bathers" in brilliant colors with simplified figures. Hugues Claude Pissarro's landscapes vary from precise, to bold, to semi-abstract. He may have the most typically Impressionistic work in the show: "Apple Trees in Spring" set in Normandy.

Lisa Tenaglia, owner of New River Fine Art, has distinguished herself by curating this exhibition with the Pissarro family while simultaneously presenting a second Pissarro family selection at her gallery in Fort Lauderdale. She has known Stern and Pissarro for some years.

Lelia Pissarro and her husband have mounted similar series from family members in London, Tel Aviv, five Japanese museums and, in 2000, the Fort Lauderdale Museum of Art. An illustrated catalog is available.

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