Neo-Impressionism is a term coined by French
art critic
An art critic is a person who is specialized in analyzing, interpreting, and evaluating art. Their written critiques or reviews contribute to art criticism and they are published in newspapers, magazines, books, exhibition brochures, and catalogue ...
Félix Fénéon
Félix Fénéon (; 22 June 1861 – 29 February 1944) was a French art critic, gallery director, writer and anarchist during the late 19th century and early 20th century. He coined the term ''Neo-Impressionism'' in 1886 to identify a group of a ...
in 1886 to describe an
art movement
An art movement is a tendency or style in art with a specific common philosophy or goal, followed by a group of artists during a specific period of time, (usually a few months, years or decades) or, at least, with the heyday of the movement defin ...
founded by
Georges Seurat
Georges Pierre Seurat ( , , ; 2 December 1859 – 29 March 1891) was a French post-Impressionist artist. He devised the painting techniques known as chromoluminarism and pointillism and used conté crayon for drawings on paper with a rough su ...
. Seurat's most renowned masterpiece, ''
A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte
''A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte'' (french: Un dimanche après-midi à l'Île de la Grande Jatte) was painted from 1884 to 1886 and is Georges Seurat's most famous work. A leading example of pointillist technique, executed ...
'', marked the beginning of this movement when it first made its appearance at an exhibition of the
Société des Artistes Indépendants
The Société des Artistes Indépendants (''Society of Independent Artists'') or Salon des Indépendants was formed in Paris on 29 July 1884. The association began with the organization of massive exhibitions in Paris, choosing the slogan "''sans ...
(Salon des Indépendants) in Paris.
Around this time, the peak of France's modern era emerged and many painters were in search of new methods. Followers of Neo-Impressionism, in particular, were drawn to modern urban scenes as well as landscapes and seashores. Science-based interpretation of lines and colors influenced Neo-Impressionists' characterization of their own contemporary art.
The
Pointillist
Pointillism (, ) is a technique of painting in which small, distinct dots of color are applied in patterns to form an image.
Georges Seurat and Paul Signac developed the technique in 1886, branching from Impressionism. The term "Pointillism" wa ...
and
Divisionist
Divisionism, also called chromoluminarism, was the characteristic style in Neo-Impressionist painting defined by the separation of colors into individual dots or patches which interacted optically..Homer, William I. ''Seurat and the Science of ...
techniques are often mentioned in this context, because they were the dominant techniques in the beginning of the Neo-impressionist movement.
Some argue that Neo-Impressionism became the first true
avant-garde
The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or ' vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretical ...
movement in painting.
The Neo-Impressionists were able to create a movement very quickly in the 19th century, partially due to its strong connection to
anarchism
Anarchism is a political philosophy and movement that is skeptical of all justifications for authority and seeks to abolish the institutions it claims maintain unnecessary coercion and hierarchy, typically including, though not necessa ...
, which set a pace for later artistic manifestations.
The movement and the style were an attempt to drive "harmonious" vision from modern science, anarchist theory, and late 19th-century debate around the value of
academic art
Academic art, or academicism or academism, is a style of painting and sculpture produced under the influence of European academies of art. Specifically, academic art is the art and artists influenced by the standards of the French Académie d ...
. The artists of the movement "promised to employ optical and psycho-biological theories in pursuit of a grand synthesis of the ideal and the real, the fugitive and the essential, science and temperament."
Overview
Principles of aesthetic: light and color
During the emergence of Neo-Impressionism, Seurat and his followers strove to refine the impulsive and intuitive artistic mannerisms of
Impressionism
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open Composition (visual arts), composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating ...
.
Neo-impressionists used disciplined networks of dots and blocks of color in their desire to instill a sense of organization and permanence.
In further defining the movement, Seurat incorporated the recent explanation of optic and color perceptions.
The development of color theory by
Michel Eugène Chevreul
Michel Eugène Chevreul (31 August 1786 – 9 April 1889) was a French chemist and centenarian whose work influenced several areas in science, medicine, and art. His early work with animal fats revolutionized soap and candle manufacturing and led ...
and others by the late 19th century played a pivotal role in shaping the Neo-Impressionist style. Ogden Rood's book, ''Modern Chromatics, with Applications to Art and Industry'', acknowledged the different behaviors exhibited by colored light and colored pigment.
While the mixture of the former created a white or gray color, that of the latter produced a dark, murky color. As painters, Neo-Impressionists had to deal with colored pigments,
so to avoid the dullness, they devised a system of pure-color juxtaposition. Mixing of colors was not necessary. The effective utilization of pointillism facilitated in eliciting a distinct luminous effect, and from a distance, the dots came together as a whole displaying maximum brilliance and conformity to actual light conditions.
Origins of the term
There are a number of alternatives to the term "Neo-Impressionism" and each has its own nuance:
Chromoluminarism
Divisionism, also called chromoluminarism, was the characteristic style in Neo-Impressionist painting defined by the separation of colors into individual dots or patches which interacted optically..Homer, William I. ''Seurat and the Science of P ...
was a term preferred by Georges Seurat.
It emphasized the studies of color and light which were central to his artistic style. This term is rarely used today.
Divisionism, which is more commonly used, is used to describe a mode of Neo-Impressionist painting. It refers to the method of applying individual strokes of complementary and contrasting colors.
Unlike other designations of this era, the term 'Neo-Impressionism' was not given as a criticism.
Instead, it embraces Seurat's and his followers' ideals in their approach to art.
Note:
Pointillism
Pointillism (, ) is a technique of painting in which small, distinct dots of color are applied in patterns to form an image.
Georges Seurat and Paul Signac developed the technique in 1886, branching from Impressionism. The term "Pointillism" wa ...
merely describes a later technique based on divisionism in which dots of color instead of blocks of color are applied.
The group of Neo-Impressionist painters
![Signac - Portrait de Félix Fénéon](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3a/Signac_-_Portrait_de_F%C3%A9lix_F%C3%A9n%C3%A9on.jpg)
Neo-Impressionism was first presented to the public in 1886 at the
Salon des Indépendants
Salon may refer to:
Common meanings
* Beauty salon, a venue for cosmetic treatments
* French term for a drawing room, an architectural space in a home
* Salon (gathering), a meeting for learning or enjoyment
Arts and entertainment
* Salon (P ...
. The Indépendants remained their main exhibition space for decades with
Signac acting as president of the association. But with the success of Neo-Impressionism, its fame spread quickly. In 1886, Seurat and Signac were invited to exhibit in the 8th and final Impressionist exhibition, later with
Les XX
''Les XX'' ( French; "''Les Vingt''"; ; ) was a group of twenty Belgian painters, designers and sculptors, formed in 1883 by the Brussels lawyer, publisher, and entrepreneur Octave Maus. For ten years, they held an annual exhibition of their ar ...
and
La Libre Esthétique in Brussels.
In 1892, a group of Neo-Impressionist painters united to show their works in Paris, in the Salons of the Hôtel Brébant, 32, boulevard Poissonnière. The following year they exhibited at 20,
rue Laffitte
Rue Laffitte is a street in the 9th arrondissement of Paris, located near the Metro stations Richelieu - Drouot and Notre-Dame-de-Lorette.
This street was created in 1771 between the Boulevard des Italiens and the Rue de Provence. Its original ...
. The exhibitions were accompanied by catalogues, the first with reference to the printer: Imp. Vve Monnom, Brussels; the second refers to M. Moline, secretary.
Pissarro
Jacob Abraham Camille Pissarro ( , ; 10 July 1830 – 13 November 1903) was a Danish-French Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist painter born on the island of St Thomas (now in the US Virgin Islands, but then in the Danish West Indies). Hi ...
and Seurat met at
Durand-Ruel
Paul Durand-Ruel (31 October 1831, Paris – 5 February 1922, Paris) was a French art dealer associated with the Impressionists and the Barbizon School. Being the first to support artists such as Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, and Pierre-Auguste ...
's in the fall of 1885 and began to experiment with a technique using tiny dots of juxtaposing colors. This technique was developed from readings of popular art history and aesthetics (the French administrator,
Charles Blanc
Charles Blanc (17 November 1813, Castres (Tarn) – 17 January 1882, Paris) was a French art critic.
Life and career
He was the younger brother of the French socialist politician and historian Louis Blanc. After the February Revolution of 184 ...
, and Swiss aesthetician, David Sutter), and manuals for the industrial and decorative arts, science of optics and perception. At this time Pissarro began to be involved with the coterie that helped found the Société des Artistes Independants in 1884. Some members of the group attended gatherings for naturalist and
symbolist
Symbolism was a late 19th-century art movement of French and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts seeking to represent absolute truths symbolically through language and metaphorical images, mainly as a reaction against naturalism and realis ...
authors at the home of Robert Caze who was an ex-
communard
The Communards () were members and supporters of the short-lived 1871 Paris Commune formed in the wake of the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War.
After the suppression of the Commune by the French Army in May 1871, 43,000 Communards ...
and radical Republican journalist. It was here that the painters got to know each other, and many showed their work at independents' shows for all their lives.
Pissarro asked Seurat and Signac to participate in the eighth impressionist exhibit in May 1886. This is where ''
A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte
''A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte'' (french: Un dimanche après-midi à l'Île de la Grande Jatte) was painted from 1884 to 1886 and is Georges Seurat's most famous work. A leading example of pointillist technique, executed ...
'' was shown. They had a separate room at the show. The Republicans' liberalization of press laws in 1881 also aided this avant-garde movement. It made it easier for people to begin their own newspapers, thus allowing more art critics to get published.
![Henri-Edmond Cross - The Evening Air - Google Art Project](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b0/Henri-Edmond_Cross_-_The_Evening_Air_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg)
The idea of the "modern primitive" drew this group and began with Signac.
After Seurat displayed ''La Grande Jatte'', the critic Fénéon coined the term Neo-Impressionism. Pissarro, his son
Lucien
Lucien is a male given name. It is the French form of Luciano or Latin ''Lucianus'', patronymic of Lucius.
Lucien, Saint Lucien, or Saint-Lucien may also refer to:
People
Given name
* Lucien of Beauvais, Christian saint
*Lucien, a band member ...
, and Signac also showed work at the same time. Soon other artists began to join the movement including
Charles Angrand
Charles Angrand (19 April 1854 – 1 April 1926) was a French artist who gained renown for his Neo-Impressionist paintings and drawings. He was an important member of the Parisian avant-garde art scene in the late 1880s and early 1890s.
Early li ...
,
Henri-Edmond Cross
Henri-Edmond Cross, born Henri-Edmond-Joseph Delacroix, (20 May 1856 – 16 May 1910) was a French painter and printmaker. He is most acclaimed as a master of Neo-Impressionism and he played an important role in shaping the second phase of t ...
,
Albert Dubois-Pillet
Albert Dubois-Pillet (28 October 1846 – 18 August 1890) was a French Neo-impressionist painter and a career army officer. He was instrumental in the founding of the Société des Artistes Indépendants, and was one of the first artists t ...
,
Léo Gausson, Louis Hayet, and
Maximilien Luce
Maximilien Luce (13 March 1858 – 6 February 1941) was a prolific French Neo-impressionist artist, known for his paintings, illustrations, engravings, and graphic art, and also for his anarchist activism. Starting as an engraver, he then c ...
.
The allure of the scientific and new techniques captivated the young artists of this movement. The movement then spread abroad when Seurat and Pissarro were invited to
Les Vingt, an avant-garde society in Brussels. This style became the dominant form in Belgium by 1889 and even artists like
Van Gogh
Vincent Willem van Gogh (; 30 March 185329 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who posthumously became one of the most famous and influential figures in Western art history. In a decade, he created about 2,100 artworks, inclu ...
tried their hand at this style.
Seurat's mission as an artist was to celebrate the power of pure color, the expressive power of line, color and value, the reform of Impressionism and of the
Beaux-Arts tradition.
Seurat "wanted to be perceived as a technician of art, and so he borrowed from science some of the signs of its authority, including the regularity and clarity of pattern."
This can be compared to how Signac "saw and emphasized a connection between anarchism, the Neo-Impressionist technique, the Mediterranean location, and the classical tradition in painting".
Signac also viewed the Mediterranean as the place for anarchist avant-garde art. The Mediterranean was rarely depicted by avant-garde painters partially because of the association between the south of France and academic classicism as well as cultural and political conservatism.
By setting his pastorals in the south, Signac followed the literary examples of
Stendhal
Marie-Henri Beyle (; 23 January 1783 – 23 March 1842), better known by his pen name Stendhal (, ; ), was a 19th-century French writer. Best known for the novels ''Le Rouge et le Noir'' (''The Red and the Black'', 1830) and ''La Chartreuse de P ...
and
Guy de Maupassant
Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant (, ; ; 5 August 1850 – 6 July 1893) was a 19th-century French author, remembered as a master of the short story form, as well as a representative of the Naturalist school, who depicted human lives, destin ...
, who linked the region with liberty. Stendhal "described the south as a place of freedom where the worst faults of capitalist society were less entrenched than in the north." Stendhal also saw the South as a connection to other "Latin" countries who are "outside the civilized societies' concern for money."
Evolution
This movement's peak years lasted about five years (1886–1891), but did not end with Georges Seurat's death in 1891.
Impressionism continued to evolve and expand over the next decade with even more distinctive characteristics. Incorporation of political and social ideas, especially anarchism, started showing prominence.
After Seurat's death by diphtheria and his friend Albert Dubois-Pillet's by smallpox in the previous year, the Neo-impressionists began to change and strengthen their image through social and political alliances. They forged links to the anarcho-communists movement and through this, many more young artists were attracted to this "blend of social and artistic theory".
In the later 1890s Signac went back to his earlier belief in the visual harmony of the Neo-impressionist style, and the belief that it signified his ideals. He also emphasized that Neo-Impressionists were not seeking realism. They did not want to imitate, but instead have "the will to create the beautiful…. We are false, false like
Corot
CoRoT (French: ; English: Convection, Rotation and planetary Transits) was a space telescope mission which operated from 2006 to 2013. The mission's two objectives were to search for extrasolar planets with short orbital periods, particularly th ...
, like
Carrière, false, false! But we also have our ideal—to which it is necessary to sacrifice everything".
This return to an earlier style was alienating and caused fissures and tensions within the previously tight-knit community of neo-impressionists.
Criticism
At the start of the movement, Neo-Impressionism was not welcomed by the art world and the general public. In 1886, Seurat's first exhibition of his now most famous work, ''A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte'', inspired torrents of negative criticism. The commotion evoked by this artwork could only be described with words like "bedlam" and "scandal".
Neo-Impressionists' use of small segments of color to compose a whole picture was considered even more controversial than its preceding movement; Impressionism had been notorious for its spontaneous representation of fleeting moments and roughness in brushwork.
Neo-Impressionism provoked similar responses for opposite reasons. The meticulously calculated regularity of brush strokes was deemed to be too mechanical and antithetical to the commonly accepted notions of creative processes set for the 19th century.
According to modern sources, much of the critique of the Neo-Impressionists at the time is just out of focus. In December 1894, the independent socialist daily ''La Petite République'' featured a front-page column by critic Adolphe Tabarant. He remarked on the new Neo-Impressionist cooperative gallery in the Rue Laffitte, focusing on Luce and Signac, also known as the young masters: "The art has, perhaps, a tendency toward an ill-tempered synthesis, toward a scientific observation that is too dry. But how it vibrates, and how it rings with truth! What an expenditure of coloring, what a profusion of agitated notions, in which one senses the noble and sincere passions of those young men who, after lamented Seurat, strive to capture all the secrets of light from the sun!"
The Neo-Impressionists were supported from the beginning in 1884 by the ''Journal des Artistes''. Other papers also discussed the future Neo-Impressionists together, thus showing that they had formed as a group through tier creation of a democratic exhibit space, not their movement or artistic style.
After the turn of the century, the critic
Félix Fénéon
Félix Fénéon (; 22 June 1861 – 29 February 1944) was a French art critic, gallery director, writer and anarchist during the late 19th century and early 20th century. He coined the term ''Neo-Impressionism'' in 1886 to identify a group of a ...
critiqued
Signac’s idealism in his later work. He compared Signac to
Claude Claude may refer to:
__NOTOC__ People and fictional characters
* Claude (given name), a list of people and fictional characters
* Claude (surname), a list of people
* Claude Lorrain (c. 1600–1682), French landscape painter, draughtsman and etcher ...
and
Poussin
Nicolas Poussin (, , ; June 1594 – 19 November 1665) was the leading painter of the classical French Baroque style, although he spent most of his working life in Rome. Most of his works were on religious and mythological subjects painted for ...
by saying that
Claude Lorrain
Claude Lorrain (; born Claude Gellée , called ''le Lorrain'' in French; traditionally just Claude in English; c. 1600 – 23 November 1682) was a French painter, draughtsman and etcher of the Baroque era. He spent most of his life in It ...
knew all the details of the real world, and that he was able to express the world contained it by his beautiful spirit. He relates Signac to an "inheritor of landscape tradition that envisioned the realm of harmony".
Divisionism
Divisionism (also called Chromo-luminarism) was the characteristic style in Neo-Impressionist painting defined by the separation of contrasting or complementing colors into individual patches which interacted optically to create shadow and dimension.
[.][Homer, William I. ''Seurat and the Science of Painting.'' Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1964.] By requiring the viewer to combine the colors optically instead of physically mixing pigments, Divisionists believed they were achieving the maximum luminosity that was scientifically possible. They also believed that it philosophically represented harmony as unanticipated colors work together equally to form a single image. Georges Seurat founded the style around 1884 as chromo-luminarism, drawing from his understanding of the scientific theories of
Michel Eugène Chevreul
Michel Eugène Chevreul (31 August 1786 – 9 April 1889) was a French chemist and centenarian whose work influenced several areas in science, medicine, and art. His early work with animal fats revolutionized soap and candle manufacturing and led ...
,
Ogden Rood
Ogden Nicholas Rood (3 February 1831 in Danbury, Connecticut – 12 November 1902 in Manhattan) was an American physicist best known for his work in color theory.
Career
At age 18, Rood became a student at Yale University, but after his sophom ...
and
Charles Blanc
Charles Blanc (17 November 1813, Castres (Tarn) – 17 January 1882, Paris) was a French art critic.
Life and career
He was the younger brother of the French socialist politician and historian Louis Blanc. After the February Revolution of 184 ...
, among others. Divisionism developed alongside Pointillism, which is defined specifically by the use of dots of paint but does not primarily focus on the separation of colors.
[Ratliff, Floyd. ''Paul Signac and Color in Neo-Impressionism.'' New York: Rockefeller UP, 1992. .]
Theoretical foundations and development
Divisionism developed in nineteenth-century painting as artists discovered scientific theories of vision which encouraged a departure from the tenets of Impressionism. Most notably as science surrounding the vibration of light and the effect on retinas developed, color palettes changed. Neo-Impressionists began to place complementary colors side-by-side to create dimension and shadows instead of working in a range of hues. This dividing up of the canvas into individual sections of complementary and contrasting colors led to the name "divisionism", a term coined by Signac.
The scientific theories and rules of color contrast that would guide composition for Divisionists placed the movement of Neo-Impressionism in contrast with Impressionism, which is characterized by the use of instinct and intuition. Scientists and artists whose theories of light or color had some impact on the development of Divisionism include Charles Henry, Charles Blanc, David Pierre Giottino Humbert de Superville
David Pierre Giottino Humbert de Superville (The Hague, 18 July 1770 – Leiden, 9 January 1849) was a Dutch artist and art scholar. He was a draughtsman, lithographer, etcher, and portrait painter, and also wrote treatises on art, including the ...
, David Sutter, Michel Eugène Chevreul
Michel Eugène Chevreul (31 August 1786 – 9 April 1889) was a French chemist and centenarian whose work influenced several areas in science, medicine, and art. His early work with animal fats revolutionized soap and candle manufacturing and led ...
, Ogden Rood and Hermann von Helmholtz
Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz (31 August 1821 – 8 September 1894) was a German physicist and physician who made significant contributions in several scientific fields, particularly hydrodynamic stability. The Helmholtz Association, ...
.
Georges Seurat
Divisionism, along with the Neo-Impressionism movement as a whole, found its beginnings in Georges Seurat's masterpiece, ''A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte''. Seurat was classically trained in the École des Beaux-Arts, and, as such, his initial works reflected the Barbizon
Barbizon () is a commune (town) in the Seine-et-Marne department in north-central France. It is located near the Fontainebleau Forest.
Demographics
The inhabitants are called ''Barbizonais''.
Art history
The Barbizon school of painters is name ...
style. Studying under Pierre Puvis de Chavannes
Pierre Puvis de Chavannes (14 December 1824 – 24 October 1898) was a French people, French Painting, painter known for his mural painting, who came to be known as "the painter for France". He became the co-founder and president of the Soci ...
, Seurat intensely pursued interests in line and color, color theory, and optical effects, all of which formed the basis of Divisionism. In 1883, Seurat and some of his colleagues began exploring ways to express as much light as possible on the canvas.[Sutter, Jean. ''The Neo Impressionists.'' Greenwich, CT: New York Graphic Society, 1970. .] By 1884, with the exhibition of his first major work, ''Bathing at Asnières'', as well as croquetons of the island of La Grande Jatte, Seurat's style began taking form with an awareness of Impressionism, but it was not until he finished ''La Grande Jatte'' in 1886 that he established his theory of chromo-luminarism. Although this painting was originally rejected by the official salon it attracted the Salon des Indépendants where Paul Signac was engaged.
Following the controversial success of ''La Grande Jatte'', Camille Pissarro and Paul Signac converted to Neo-Impressionism and, along with Pissarro's son Lucien, formed the basis of the Neo-Impressionist and Divisionist movements. Later promoted by Symbolist
Symbolism was a late 19th-century art movement of French and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts seeking to represent absolute truths symbolically through language and metaphorical images, mainly as a reaction against naturalism and realis ...
artists and critics, Divisionism became the avant-garde style of post-Impressionism.
The support Seurat initially received slowly dissipated as he became increasingly hostile towards other artists, believing that they were corrupting his style and technique. By the end of his life few works of his received the attention they used to. ''Circus'', an unfinished work exhibited after his death, was barely noticed by critics or the general public.
Camille Pissarro
Camille Pissarro
Jacob Abraham Camille Pissarro ( , ; 10 July 1830 – 13 November 1903) was a Danish-French Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist painter born on the island of Saint Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, St Thomas (now in the US Virgin Islands, but t ...
, born in 1830, is a notable radical artist and the only painter to exhibit in all eight Impressionist shows from 1874 to 1886. During Pissarro's long career he remained at the foreground of French avant-garde art, although his Neo-Impressionist phase is among his most popular and most studied. Pissarro studied under Fritz Melbye, spending the first 15 years of his career painting rural landscapes, market scenes and ports, all of which make subject returns throughout his later career.
During his Impressionist phase, Pissarro switched to a lighter brush stroke and a brighter color palette, frequently applied in sections of unmixed color. This style of Impressionism gave way to joining Seurat in Neo-Impressionism in 1885. He was the first convert to what is now called Divisionism. Pissarro developed what he called "scientific Impressionism" and later left the movement as a whole, finding the compositional rules too strict.
Paul Signac
Paul Signac
Paul Victor Jules Signac ( , ; 11 November 1863 – 15 August 1935) was a French Neo-Impressionist painter who, working with Georges Seurat, helped develop the Pointillist style.
Biography
Paul Signac was born in Paris on 11 November 1863. H ...
, born in 1863, was Seurat's closest friend and the face of the Neo-Impressionist movement. He had no formal art training but was able to refine his skills through travel and replication as he was born into a family of financial stability. Signac was encouraged to remove earth tones from his palette by Seurat, and in turn introduced Seurat to Symbolism, jointly creating the Neo-Impressionist movement. He is also noted for initiating Vincent van Gogh
Vincent Willem van Gogh (; 30 March 185329 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionism, Post-Impressionist painter who posthumously became one of the most famous and influential figures in Western art history. In a decade, he created about 2 ...
, Théo van Rysselberghe
Théophile "Théo" van Rysselberghe (23 November 1862 – 13 December 1926) was a Belgian neo-impressionist painter, who played a pivotal role in the European art scene at the turn of the twentieth century.
Biography
Early years
Born ...
and Henry Van de Velde
Henry Clemens van de Velde (; 3 April 1863 – 15 October 1957) was a Belgian painter, architect, interior designer, and art theorist. Together with Victor Horta and Paul Hankar, he is considered one of the founders of Art Nouveau in Belgium.'' ...
to the movement.
In 1891, the year after Seurat's death, Signac began to introduce abstract visual rhythms and subjectivity into his works and by transit into Neo-Impressionism. Signac's creative experimentation inspired artists such as Matisse and Henri-Edmond Cross to further define Neo-Impressionism in the 20th century. His knowledge of the movement lead to illustrating Charles Henry's Cerle Chromatique et Rapporteur Esthétique, a widely influential book on color theory and later to his authoring the manifesto of Neo-Impressionism, D’Eugène Delacroix au Néo-Impressionisme in 1899.
Color theory
Charles Blanc
Charles Blanc (17 November 1813, Castres (Tarn) – 17 January 1882, Paris) was a French art critic.
Life and career
He was the younger brother of the French socialist politician and historian Louis Blanc. After the February Revolution of 184 ...
's Grammaire des arts du dessin introduced Seurat to the theories of color and vision that would inspire chromo-luminarism. Blanc's work, drawing from the theories of Michel Eugène Chevreul
Michel Eugène Chevreul (31 August 1786 – 9 April 1889) was a French chemist and centenarian whose work influenced several areas in science, medicine, and art. His early work with animal fats revolutionized soap and candle manufacturing and led ...
and Eugène Delacroix
Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix ( , ; 26 April 1798 – 13 August 1863) was a French Romantic artist regarded from the outset of his career as the leader of the French Romantic school.Noon, Patrick, et al., ''Crossing the Channel: Britis ...
, stated that optical mixing would produce more vibrant and pure colors than the traditional process of mixing pigments.[ Mixing pigments physically is a subtractive process with cyan, magenta, and yellow being the primary colors. On the other hand, if colored light is mixed together, an additive mixture results, a process in which the primary colors are red, green and blue. The optical mixture which characterized Divisionism—the process of mixing color by juxtaposing pigments—is different from either additive or subtractive mixture, although combining colors in optical mixture functions the same way as additive mixture, i.e. the primary colors are the same.][ In reality, Seurat's paintings did not actually achieve true optical mixing; for him, the theory was more useful for causing vibrations of color to the viewer, where contrasting colors placed near each other would intensify the relationship between the colors while preserving their singular separate identity.]
In Divisionist color theory, artists interpreted the scientific literature through making light operate in one of the following contexts:[
* Local color: As the dominant element of the painting, local color refers to the true color of subjects, e.g. green grass or blue sky.
* Direct sunlight: As appropriate, yellow-orange colors representing the sun's action would be interspersed with the natural colors to emulate the effect of direct sunlight.
* Shadow: If lighting is only indirect, various other colors, such as blues, reds and purples, can be used to simulate the darkness and shadows.
* Reflected light: An object which is adjacent to another in a painting could cast reflected colors onto it.
* Contrast: To take advantage of Chevreul's theory of simultaneous contrast, contrasting colors might be placed in close proximity.
Seurat's theories intrigued many of his contemporaries, as other artists seeking a reaction against Impressionism joined the Neo-Impressionist movement. Paul Signac, in particular, became one of the main proponents of divisionist theory, especially after Seurat's death in 1891. In fact, Signac's book, ''D’Eugène Delacroix au Néo-Impressionnisme'', published in 1899, coined the term Divisionism and became widely recognized as the manifesto of Neo-Impressionism.]
Divisionism in France and northern Europe
In addition to Signac, other French artists, largely through associations in the Société des Artistes Indépendants, adopted some Divisionist techniques, including Camille and Lucien Pissarro
Lucien Pissarro (20 February 1863 – 10 July 1944) was a landscape painter, printmaker, wood engraver and designer and printer of fine books. His landscape paintings employ techniques of Impressionism and Neo-Impressionism, but he also exhib ...
, Albert Dubois-Pillet
Albert Dubois-Pillet (28 October 1846 – 18 August 1890) was a French Neo-impressionist painter and a career army officer. He was instrumental in the founding of the Société des Artistes Indépendants, and was one of the first artists t ...
, Charles Angrand
Charles Angrand (19 April 1854 – 1 April 1926) was a French artist who gained renown for his Neo-Impressionist paintings and drawings. He was an important member of the Parisian avant-garde art scene in the late 1880s and early 1890s.
Early li ...
, Maximilien Luce
Maximilien Luce (13 March 1858 – 6 February 1941) was a prolific French Neo-impressionist artist, known for his paintings, illustrations, engravings, and graphic art, and also for his anarchist activism. Starting as an engraver, he then c ...
, Henri-Edmond Cross
Henri-Edmond Cross, born Henri-Edmond-Joseph Delacroix, (20 May 1856 – 16 May 1910) was a French painter and printmaker. He is most acclaimed as a master of Neo-Impressionism and he played an important role in shaping the second phase of t ...
and Hippolyte Petitjean. Additionally, through Paul Signac's advocacy of Divisionism, an influence can be seen in some of the works of Vincent van Gogh
Vincent Willem van Gogh (; 30 March 185329 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionism, Post-Impressionist painter who posthumously became one of the most famous and influential figures in Western art history. In a decade, he created about 2 ...
, Henri Matisse
Henri Émile Benoît Matisse (; 31 December 1869 – 3 November 1954) was a French visual artist, known for both his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known prima ...
, Jean Metzinger
Jean Dominique Antony Metzinger (; 24 June 1883 – 3 November 1956) was a major 20th-century French painter, theorist, writer, critic and poet, who along with Albert Gleizes wrote the first theoretical work on Cubism. His earliest works, from 1 ...
, Robert Delaunay
Robert Delaunay (12 April 1885 – 25 October 1941) was a French artist who, with his wife Sonia Delaunay and others, co-founded the Orphism art movement, noted for its use of strong colours and geometric shapes. His later works were more abstra ...
and Pablo Picasso
Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and Scenic design, theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th ce ...
.[Rapetti Rodolphe Signac, Paul Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online]
/ref>
Following the revolutions of 1848, a strong undercurrent of radical anarchism ran throughout the artistic community of France. The combination of social art and artistic freedom and the departure from traditional color painting techniques attracted radicals to the movement of Neo-Impressionism. However these radicals were often criticized for depicting a peaceful and thoughtful approach to social revolution, combining science and moral harmony.
In 1907 Metzinger and Delaunay were singled out by the critic Louis Vauxcelles as Divisionists who used large, mosaic-like 'cubes' to construct small but highly symbolic compositions. Both artists had developed a new sub-style that had great significance shortly thereafter within the context of their Cubist works. Piet Mondrian
Pieter Cornelis Mondriaan (), after 1906 known as Piet Mondrian (, also , ; 7 March 1872 – 1 February 1944), was a Dutch painter and art theoretician who is regarded as one of the greatest artists of the 20th century. He is known for being ...
and Nico van Rijn, in the Netherlands, developed a similar mosaic-like Divisionist technique circa 1909. The Futurists
Futurists (also known as futurologists, prospectivists, foresight practitioners and horizon scanners) are people whose specialty or interest is futurology or the attempt to systematically explore predictions and possibilities abou ...
later (1909–1916) would adapt the style, in part influenced by Gino Severini
Gino Severini (7 April 1883 – 26 February 1966) was an Italian Painting, painter and a leading member of the Futurism (art), Futurist movement. For much of his life he divided his time between Paris and Rome. He was associated with neo-classici ...
's Parisian experience (from 1907), into their dynamic paintings and sculpture.
Divisionism in Italy
The influence of Seurat and Signac on some Italian painters became evident in the First Triennale in 1891 in Milan. Spearheaded by Grubicy de Dragon, and codified later by Gaetano Previati
Gaetano Previati (1852 – 1920) was an Italian Symbolist painter in the Divisionist style.
Biography
Previati was born in Ferrara. He relocated to Milan in 1876 and enrolled at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts, studying under Giuseppe Bertini, G ...
in his ''Principi scientifici del divisionismo'' of 1906, a number of painters mainly in Northern Italy experimented to various degrees with these techniques. These Italian artists merged Neo-impressionism with Symbolism
Symbolism or symbolist may refer to:
Arts
* Symbolism (arts), a 19th-century movement rejecting Realism
** Symbolist movement in Romania, symbolist literature and visual arts in Romania during the late 19th and early 20th centuries
** Russian sy ...
creating allegorical paintings using a divisionist method. For example, Pellizza da Volpedo applied the technique to social (and political) subjects; in this he was joined by Angelo Morbelli
Angelo Morbelli ( Alessandria, 1853 – Milan, 1919) was an Italian painter of the Divisionist style.
Biography
A grant from the City Council of Alessandria enabled Morbelli to enrol at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts, Milan, in 1867. He was awa ...
and Emilio Longoni
Emilio Longoni (July 9, 1859 – November 29, 1932) was an Italian painter.
Biography
He was born in Barlassina on July 9, 1859, fourth of twelve children, from Garibaldi’s volunteer and horseshoer Matteo Longoni and from tailor Luigia M ...
. Among Pellizza's Divisionist works were ''Speranze deluse'' (1894) and ''Il sole nascente'' (1904). It was, however, in the subject of landscapes that Divisionism found strong advocates, including Segantini, Previati, Morbelli, and Carlo Fornara. Further adherents in painting genre subjects were Plinio Nomellini
Plinio Nomellini (1866–1943) was an Italian painter.
Biography
Nomellini was born in Livorno in 1866. In 1885 he enrolled at the Florence Academy of Fine Arts, where he studied under Giovanni Fattori and formed friendships with Telemaco Sign ...
, Rubaldo Merello
Rubaldo Merello (16 July 1872 – 31 January 1922) was an Italian painter and sculptor.
Life and career
Born in Montespluga, a frazione of Madesimo, Merello was the son of a customs inspector. In 1881 he moved to Genoa with his family, and t ...
, Giuseppe Cominetti, Angelo Barabino, Camillo Innocenti, Enrico Lionne, and Arturo Noci. Divisionism was also an important influence in the work of Futurists Gino Severini (''Souvenirs de Voyage'', 1911); Giacomo Balla
Giacomo Balla (18 July 1871 – 1 March 1958) was an Italian painter, art teacher and poet best known as a key proponent of Futurism. In his paintings he depicted light, movement and speed. He was concerned with expressing movement in his works, ...
(''Arc Lamp'', 1909); Carlo Carrà
Carlo Carrà (; February 11, 1881 – April 13, 1966) was an Italian painter and a leading figure of the Futurist movement that flourished in Italy during the beginning of the 20th century. In addition to his many paintings, he wrote a number ...
(''Leaving the scene'', 1910); and Umberto Boccioni
Umberto Boccioni (, ; 19 October 1882 – 17 August 1916) was an influential Italian painter and sculptor. He helped shape the revolutionary aesthetic of the Futurism movement as one of its principal figures. Despite his short life, his approach ...
(''The City Rises'', 1910).[Derived from paragraph i]
Associazione Pellizza da Volpedo
, which cites Enciclopedia dell'arte, Milano (Garzanti) 2002, and also see Voci del Divisionismo italiano in Bollettino Anisa, N. 12 Anno XIX, n. 1, May 2000.
Criticism and controversy
Divisionism quickly received both negative and positive attention from art critics, who generally either embraced or condemned the incorporation of scientific theories in the Neo-Impressionist techniques. For example, Joris-Karl Huysmans
Charles-Marie-Georges Huysmans (, ; 5 February 1848 – 12 May 1907) was a French novelist and art critic who published his works as Joris-Karl Huysmans (, variably abbreviated as J. K. or J.-K.). He is most famous for the novel ''À rebou ...
spoke negatively of Seurat's paintings, saying "Strip his figures of the colored fleas that cover them, underneath there is nothing, no thought, no soul, nothing".[Rewald, John. ''Seurat: a biography.'' New York: H.N. Abrams, 1990. .] Leaders of Impressionism, such as Monet
Oscar-Claude Monet (, , ; 14 November 1840 – 5 December 1926) was a French painter and founder of impressionist painting who is seen as a key precursor to modernism, especially in his attempts to paint nature as he perceived it. During ...
and Renoir
Pierre-Auguste Renoir (; 25 February 1841 – 3 December 1919) was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. As a celebrator of beauty and especially feminine sensuality, it has been said that "Re ...
, refused to exhibit with Seurat, and even Camille Pissarro, who initially supported Divisionism, later spoke negatively of the technique.
While most Divisionists did not receive much critical approval, some critics were loyal to the movement, including notably Félix Fénéon
Félix Fénéon (; 22 June 1861 – 29 February 1944) was a French art critic, gallery director, writer and anarchist during the late 19th century and early 20th century. He coined the term ''Neo-Impressionism'' in 1886 to identify a group of a ...
, Arsène Alexandre
Arsène Alexandre (16 August 1859, Paris – 1 October 1937, Brain sur Allonnes) was a French art critic.
He was a contributor to ''L'Événement'', ''Le Paris'' and ''L'Éclair'' and in 1894 was one of the founders of the satirical journal ''L ...
, and Antoine de la Rochefoucauld
Antoine de la Rochefoucauld, the second of this name, Seigneur de Chaumont-sur-Loire, served Louis I de Bourbon, prince de Condé as a knight (''chevalier de l'ordre du Roi'') and his chamberlain. On 7 October 1552, he married Cécile de Montmir ...
.[ Furthermore, Divisionists were often criticized for being too peaceful and logical in revolution. Because their color choices were often planned and scientifically constructed, they lacked the radical freedom that anarchists embodied. French anarchy, particularly after Haussmannization, placed an emphasis on a classless society but Divisionists, and all artists, reinforced classes through middle-class consumerism of their works. These conflicting ideals put Divisionism under the critical lens of radical anarchists.]
Scientific misconceptions
Although Divisionist artists strongly believed their style was founded in scientific principles
The scientific method is an empirical method for acquiring knowledge that has characterized the development of science since at least the 17th century (with notable practitioners in previous centuries; see the article history of scientific m ...
, some people believe that there is evidence that Divisionists misinterpreted some basic elements of optical theory.[Lee, Alan. "Seurat and Science." ''Art History'' 10 (June 1987): 203-24.] For example, one of these misconceptions can be seen in the general belief that the Divisionist method of painting allowed for greater luminosity than previous techniques. Additive luminosity is only applicable in the case of colored light, not juxtaposed pigments; in reality, the luminosity of two pigments next to each other is just the average of their individual luminosities.[ Furthermore, it is not possible to create a color using optical mixture which could not also be created by physical mixture. Logical inconsistencies can also be found with the Divisionist exclusion of darker colors and their interpretation of simultaneous contrast.][
]
Neo-Impressionist paintings
Image:Charles Théophile Angrand 001.jpg, Charles Angrand
Charles Angrand (19 April 1854 – 1 April 1926) was a French artist who gained renown for his Neo-Impressionist paintings and drawings. He was an important member of the Parisian avant-garde art scene in the late 1880s and early 1890s.
Early li ...
, ''Couple dans la rue'', 1887, oil on canvas, 38.5 x 33 cm, Musée d'Orsay
The Musée d'Orsay ( , , ) ( en, Orsay Museum) is a museum in Paris, France, on the Left Bank of the Seine. It is housed in the former Gare d'Orsay, a Beaux-Arts railway station built between 1898 and 1900. The museum holds mainly French art ...
, Paris
Image:Portrait-Alice-Sethe-1888.jpg, Théo van Rysselberghe
Théophile "Théo" van Rysselberghe (23 November 1862 – 13 December 1926) was a Belgian neo-impressionist painter, who played a pivotal role in the European art scene at the turn of the twentieth century.
Biography
Early years
Born ...
, ''Portrait of Alice Sethe'', 1888, Musée départemental Maurice Denis "The Priory", Saint-Germain-en-Laye
Image:Camille Pissarro 016.jpg, Camille Pissarro
Jacob Abraham Camille Pissarro ( , ; 10 July 1830 – 13 November 1903) was a Danish-French Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist painter born on the island of Saint Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, St Thomas (now in the US Virgin Islands, but t ...
, ''Hay harvest at Eragny-sur-Epte'', 1889, oil on canvas, 73 × 60 cm, private collection
File:Georges Lemmen - Plage à Heist.jpg, Georges Lemmen
Georges Lemmen (1865–1916) was a neo-impressionist painter from Belgium. He was a member of Les XX from 1888. His works include ''The Beach at Heist'', ''Aline Marechal'' and ''Vase of Flowers''. Yvonne Serruys studied in his workshop in Brus ...
, ''The Beach at Heist''), 1891, oil on panel, 37.5 x 45.7 cm, Musée d'Orsay
The Musée d'Orsay ( , , ) ( en, Orsay Museum) is a museum in Paris, France, on the Left Bank of the Seine. It is housed in the former Gare d'Orsay, a Beaux-Arts railway station built between 1898 and 1900. The museum holds mainly French art ...
, Paris
File:Henri-Edmond Cross, 1908, Les cyprès à Cagnes, oil on canvas, 81 x 100 cm, Musée d'Orsay, Paris.jpg, Henri-Edmond Cross
Henri-Edmond Cross, born Henri-Edmond-Joseph Delacroix, (20 May 1856 – 16 May 1910) was a French painter and printmaker. He is most acclaimed as a master of Neo-Impressionism and he played an important role in shaping the second phase of t ...
, ''Les cyprès à Cagnes'', 1908, oil on canvas, 81 x 100 cm, Musée d'Orsay
The Musée d'Orsay ( , , ) ( en, Orsay Museum) is a museum in Paris, France, on the Left Bank of the Seine. It is housed in the former Gare d'Orsay, a Beaux-Arts railway station built between 1898 and 1900. The museum holds mainly French art ...
, Paris
Image:Matisse-Luxe.jpg, Henri Matisse
Henri Émile Benoît Matisse (; 31 December 1869 – 3 November 1954) was a French visual artist, known for both his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known prima ...
, '' Luxe, Calme et Volupté'', 1904, oil on canvas, 98 x 118.5 cm, Musée d'Orsay
The Musée d'Orsay ( , , ) ( en, Orsay Museum) is a museum in Paris, France, on the Left Bank of the Seine. It is housed in the former Gare d'Orsay, a Beaux-Arts railway station built between 1898 and 1900. The museum holds mainly French art ...
, Paris
File:Robert Antoine Pinchon, 1905, La Seine à Rouen au crépuscule, oil on paperboard, 65 x 54 cm.jpg, Robert Antoine Pinchon
Robert Antoine Pinchon (, 1 July 1886 in Rouen – 9 January 1943 in Bois-Guillaume) was a French Post-Impressionist landscape painter of the Rouen School (''l'École de Rouen'') who was born and spent most of his life in France. He was consist ...
, ''La Seine à Rouen au crépuscule'', 1905, oil on paperboard, 65 x 54 cm, private collection
File:Jean Metzinger, c.1906, Femme au Chapeau (Woman with a Hat), oil on canvas, 44.8 x 36.8 cm, Korban Art Foundation..jpg, Jean Metzinger
Jean Dominique Antony Metzinger (; 24 June 1883 – 3 November 1956) was a major 20th-century French painter, theorist, writer, critic and poet, who along with Albert Gleizes wrote the first theoretical work on Cubism. His earliest works, from 1 ...
, ''Femme au Chapeau
''Femme au Chapeau'' or ''Lucie au chapeau'' is an oil painting created circa 1906 by the French artist and theorist Jean Metzinger (1883–1956). The work is executed in a highly personal Divisionist style with a marked Proto-Cubist component ...
'', c.1906, oil on canvas, 44.8 x 36.8 cm, Korban Art Foundation
File:Robert Delaunay, 1906, Portrait de Metzinger, oil on canvas, 55 x 43 cm, DSC08255.jpg, Robert Delaunay
Robert Delaunay (12 April 1885 – 25 October 1941) was a French artist who, with his wife Sonia Delaunay and others, co-founded the Orphism art movement, noted for its use of strong colours and geometric shapes. His later works were more abstra ...
, ''Portrait de Metzinger'', 1906, oil on canvas, 55 x 43 cm
Notable artists
*Charles Angrand
Charles Angrand (19 April 1854 – 1 April 1926) was a French artist who gained renown for his Neo-Impressionist paintings and drawings. He was an important member of the Parisian avant-garde art scene in the late 1880s and early 1890s.
Early li ...
* Anna Boch
*Henri-Edmond Cross
Henri-Edmond Cross, born Henri-Edmond-Joseph Delacroix, (20 May 1856 – 16 May 1910) was a French painter and printmaker. He is most acclaimed as a master of Neo-Impressionism and he played an important role in shaping the second phase of t ...
*Robert Delaunay
Robert Delaunay (12 April 1885 – 25 October 1941) was a French artist who, with his wife Sonia Delaunay and others, co-founded the Orphism art movement, noted for its use of strong colours and geometric shapes. His later works were more abstra ...
*Albert Dubois-Pillet
Albert Dubois-Pillet (28 October 1846 – 18 August 1890) was a French Neo-impressionist painter and a career army officer. He was instrumental in the founding of the Société des Artistes Indépendants, and was one of the first artists t ...
*Willy Finch
Alfred William (Willy) Finch (1854 –1930) was a ceramist and painter in the pointillist and Neo-Impressionist style. Born in Brussels to British parents, he spent most of his creative life in Finland.
Life and work
Alfred William Finch ...
* Léo Gausson
*Georges Lemmen
Georges Lemmen (1865–1916) was a neo-impressionist painter from Belgium. He was a member of Les XX from 1888. His works include ''The Beach at Heist'', ''Aline Marechal'' and ''Vase of Flowers''. Yvonne Serruys studied in his workshop in Brus ...
*Maximilien Luce
Maximilien Luce (13 March 1858 – 6 February 1941) was a prolific French Neo-impressionist artist, known for his paintings, illustrations, engravings, and graphic art, and also for his anarchist activism. Starting as an engraver, he then c ...
*Henri Matisse
Henri Émile Benoît Matisse (; 31 December 1869 – 3 November 1954) was a French visual artist, known for both his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known prima ...
*Jean Metzinger
Jean Dominique Antony Metzinger (; 24 June 1883 – 3 November 1956) was a major 20th-century French painter, theorist, writer, critic and poet, who along with Albert Gleizes wrote the first theoretical work on Cubism. His earliest works, from 1 ...
* Hippolyte Petitjean
*Robert Antoine Pinchon
Robert Antoine Pinchon (, 1 July 1886 in Rouen – 9 January 1943 in Bois-Guillaume) was a French Post-Impressionist landscape painter of the Rouen School (''l'École de Rouen'') who was born and spent most of his life in France. He was consist ...
*Camille Pissarro
Jacob Abraham Camille Pissarro ( , ; 10 July 1830 – 13 November 1903) was a Danish-French Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist painter born on the island of Saint Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, St Thomas (now in the US Virgin Islands, but t ...
*Lucien Pissarro
Lucien Pissarro (20 February 1863 – 10 July 1944) was a landscape painter, printmaker, wood engraver and designer and printer of fine books. His landscape paintings employ techniques of Impressionism and Neo-Impressionism, but he also exhib ...
*Théo van Rysselberghe
Théophile "Théo" van Rysselberghe (23 November 1862 – 13 December 1926) was a Belgian neo-impressionist painter, who played a pivotal role in the European art scene at the turn of the twentieth century.
Biography
Early years
Born ...
*Georges Seurat
Georges Pierre Seurat ( , , ; 2 December 1859 – 29 March 1891) was a French post-Impressionist artist. He devised the painting techniques known as chromoluminarism and pointillism and used conté crayon for drawings on paper with a rough su ...
*Paul Signac
Paul Victor Jules Signac ( , ; 11 November 1863 – 15 August 1935) was a French Neo-Impressionist painter who, working with Georges Seurat, helped develop the Pointillist style.
Biography
Paul Signac was born in Paris on 11 November 1863. H ...
* Jan Toorop
*Henry van de Velde
Henry Clemens van de Velde (; 3 April 1863 – 15 October 1957) was a Belgian painter, architect, interior designer, and art theorist. Together with Victor Horta and Paul Hankar, he is considered one of the founders of Art Nouveau in Belgium.'' ...
Timeline: Lives of the Neo-Impressionists
The Neo-Impressionists
ImageSize = width:800 height:216
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AlignBars = justify
Colors =
id:Dubois-Pillet value:lavender
id:Boch value:powderblue
id:Angrand value:lavender
id:Finch value:powderblue
id:Cross value:lavender
id:Luce value:powderblue
id:Toorop value:lavender
id:Seurat value:powderblue
id:Rysselberghe value:lavender
id:Signac value:powderblue
id:Velde value:lavender
id:Lemmen value:powderblue
id:vanRijn value:lavender
Period = from:1835 till:1965
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align:center textcolor:black fontsize:8 mark:(line, black) width:16 shift:(0,-5)
bar:Dubois-Pillet color:Dubois-Pillet
from: 1846 till: 1890
bar:Boch color:Boch
from: 1848 till: 1936
bar:Angrand color:Angrand
from: 1854 till: 1926
bar:Finch color:Finch
from: 1854 till: 1930
bar:Cross color:Cross
from: 1856 till: 1910
bar:Luce color:Luce
from: 1858 till: 1941
bar:Toorop color:Toorop
from: 1858 till: 1928
bar:Seurat color:Seurat
from: 1859 till: 1891
bar:Rysselberghe color:Rysselberghe
from: 1862 till: 1926
bar:Signac color:Signac
from: 1863 till: 1935
bar:Velde color:Velde
from: 1863 till: 1957
bar:Lemmen color:Lemmen
from: 1865 till: 1916
bar:vanRijn color:vanRijn
from: 1887 till: 1962
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at:1860 color:black width:0.5 layer:back
at:1870 color:black width:0.5 layer:back
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at:1890 color:black width:0.5 layer:back
at:1900 color:black width:0.5 layer:back
at:1910 color:black width:0.5 layer:back
at:1920 color:black width:0.5 layer:back
at:1930 color:black width:0.5 layer:back
at:1940 color:black width:0.5 layer:back
at:1950 color:black width:0.5 layer:back
See also
* Post-Impressionism
Post-Impressionism (also spelled Postimpressionism) was a predominantly French art movement that developed roughly between 1886 and 1905, from the last Impressionist exhibition to the birth of Fauvism. Post-Impressionism emerged as a reaction ag ...
* Stippling
Stippling is the creation of a pattern simulating varying degrees of solidity or shading by using small dots. Such a pattern may occur in nature and these effects are frequently emulated by artists.
Art
In printmaking, stipple engraving is ...
* Pointillism
Pointillism (, ) is a technique of painting in which small, distinct dots of color are applied in patterns to form an image.
Georges Seurat and Paul Signac developed the technique in 1886, branching from Impressionism. The term "Pointillism" wa ...
* Micromontage
In music, montage (literally "putting together") or sound collage ("gluing together") is a technique where newly branded sound objects or compositions, including songs, are created from collage, also known as montage. This is often done throu ...
, similar technique in music
References
Other sources
*
*
*Herbert, Robert.
Georges Seurat, 1859–1891
', New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1991. .
*Herbert, Robert, ''Neo-Impressionism'', The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York, 1968, Library of Congress Card Catalogue Number: 68-16803
*Herbert, Robert.
Georges Seurat, 1859-1891
', New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1991. .
*
*Ward, Martha (1996). ''Pissarro, Neo-impressionism and the Spaces of the Avant-Garde'' Chicago, Illinois: Chicago University Press. .
*Haslett, Carrie (2002). ''Neo-Impressionism: Artists on the Edge''. Portland, Oregon: Portland Museum of Art. .*Blanc, Charles. ''The Grammar of Painting and Engraving. '' Chicago: S.C. Griggs and Company, 1891
*Block, Jane. "Neo-Impressionism." ''Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. ''
*Block, Jane. "Pointillism." ''Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. ''
* Norma Broude, Broude, Norma, ed. ''Seurat in Perspective. '' Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1978. .
* Cachin, Françoise. ''Paul Signac. '' Greenwich, CT: New York Graphic Society, 1971. .
*Clement, Russell T., and Annick Houzé. ''Neo-impressionist painters: a sourcebook on Georges Seurat, Camille Pissarro, Paul Signac, Théo van Rysselberghe, Henri Edmond Cross, Charles Angrand, Maximilien Luce, and Albert Dubois-Pillet. '' Westport, CT: Greenwood P, 1999. .
Chevreul, Michel Eugène. ''The Principles of Harmony and Contrast of Colors
'' London: Henry G. Bohn, York Street, Covent Garden, 1860
*Dorra, Henri. ''Symbolist Art Theories: A Critical Anthology''. Berkeley: U of California, 1994.
*Gage, John. "The Technique of Seurat: A Reappraisal." ''The Art Bulletin'' 69 (Sep. 1987): 448-54. JSTOR
*Hutton, John G. ''Neo-impressionism and the search for solid ground: art, science, and anarchism in fin-de-siècle France. '' Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State UP, 1994. .
* Puppo, Dario del. "Il Quarto Stato." ''Science and Society'', Vol. 58, No. 2, pp. 13, 1994.
* Meighan, Judith. "In Praise of Motherhood: The Promise and Failure of Painting for Social Reform in Late-Nineteenth-Century Italy." ''Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide'', Vol. 1, No. 1, 2002.
* "Radical Light: Italy's Divisionist Painters." ''History Today'', August 2008.
* Rewald, John. ''Georges Seurat.'' New York: Wittenborn & Co., 1946.
* Roslak, Robyn. ''Neo-Impressionism and Anarchism in Fin-de-Siecle France: Painting, Politics and Landscape''. N.p., 2007.
*
* Signac, Paul. ''D’Eugène Delacroix au Neo-Impressionnisme. '' 1899
* Winkfield, Trevor. "The Signac Syndrome." ''Modern Painters'' Autumn 2001: 66-70.
Tim Parks on divisionist movement of painters in Italy
{{DEFAULTSORT:Neo-Impressionism
Impressionism,
Modern art
Post-Impressionism