By Carrie Antlfinger

Associated Press Writer

MILWAUKEE, WISC. (AP) — Lelia Pissarro would love to hang on her wall a “magnificent” 1903 oil she owns of the port of Le Havre in France, painted by her great-grandfather Camille Pissarro.

But her husband has talked her into selling it - with an asking price of $1.3 million.

She said the couple, who live in London, rarely agree on what should be sold and what should be kept. But she is willing to part with the great artist’s painting because it has only recently been reacquired by the family and she sees it as an important investment in their children’s future. “It’s a painting we should not afford to keep in our collection,” she said.

The work is part of an exhibition starting Friday at the DeLind Gallery of FineArt. The show features about 60 paintings, drawings and etchings - all for sale - by Lelia Pissarro, Camille Pissarro, four of his sons and a grandson.

The sale starts a day before the opening of “Pissarro: Creating the Impressionist Landscape” — the first major US show devoted to Pissarro in more than a decade — in the Santiago Calatrava-designed wing of the Milwaukee Art Museum, which runs through September 9.

Lelia Pissarro’s husband, David Stern, a Pissarro family historian and gallery owner, said galleries must have important works to sell.

“The only way a gallery can make a profit is by selling works off the wall and in order to do that one has to have in an exhibition good centerpieces, and for that we have to compromise on putting material for sale we would prefer to keep,” he said.

Stern, who described the Pissarro family as the largest dynasty of artists in the history of Western art, said the exhibition allows the public to be exposed to the Pissarro family’s work.

But if the painting doesn’t sell by the show’s end on July 14, they likely will keep it. It would cost a lot more to buy it back later because of the demand for good art, Stern said.

“If I don’t have this one, my collection will never be finished,” Lelia Pissarro said. “The colors ... the little flags, the boats. It’s everything — absolutely perfect.”

Michael Goforth, the gallery’s director and the exhibition’s curator, said he can see why she would want to keep it, but he has spoken with collectors and he expects it to sell. He suspects it’s the only painting on the market in Pissarro’s series of the port of Le Havre. It was also one of his last works before he died in 1903.

The other paintings in the sale start at $1,000. Most of the works are owned by Stern and Lelia Pissarro, but Stern borrowed some because they fit into the show.

Pissarro trained his five sons, but some ended up also being influenced by friends of Pissarro, such as Paul Cezanne, Claude Monet and Paul Gauguin, Goforth said.

“The paintings at the museum are not available,” Goforth said. “You can look, but you can’t touch. Here you can look, you can touch and we’ll even put a big red bow on it and send it home with you.”

The show includes two oil paintings, three drawings and several etchings by Pissarro, considered the father of impressionism.

Family members in the show include Pissarro’s sons Paulemile, Georges Manzana, Lucien and Ludovic-Rodo; Paulemile’s son H. Claude and Claude’s daughter Lelia — representing mostly impressionism and modernism. The dates span more than a century, the oldest being one of Pissarro’s that goes back as far as 1862.

Goforth said Pissarro’s descendants didn’t try to copy him.

“They are trying to put a different spin on it, their own, their individual thumbprint,” he said. “Sure, there are similarities.”

Lelia Pissarro, 43, who started painting when she was young, used to have more of a classical style like that of her family, but now concentrates on more cutting edge, abstract art.

At one time, she would not have felt comfortable doing abstract art because the family is picky about the work that is done under the Pissarro name.

“It would have been a disaster if I would have become an abstract artist without proving…that I could draw,” she said. Stern supports his wife’s style choice.

“Camille was a very contemporary artist in his time,” he said. “It’s right for Lelia to be an up-to-date artist and explore the endless horizons of what art can be.”