|
|
|
Neo-Impressionism
(Encyclopaedia Britannica)
movement in French painting of the late 19th century that reacted
against the empirical realism of Impressionism by relying on
systematic calculation and scientific theory to achieve
predetermined visual effects. Whereas the Impressionist painters
spontaneously recorded nature in terms of the fugitive effects of
colour and light, the Neo-Impressionists applied scientific optical
principles of light and colour to create strictly formalized
compositions. Neo-Impressionism was led by Georges Seurat, who was
its original theorist and most significant artist, and by Paul
Signac, also an important artist and the movement's major spokesman.
Other Neo-Impressionist painters were Henri-Edmond Cross,
Albert Dubois-Pillet, Maximilien Luce, Théo Van Rysselberghe, and,
for a time, the Impressionist painter Camille Pissarro. The group
founded a Société des Artistes Indépendants in 1884.
The terms divisionism and pointillism originated in descriptions of
Seurat's painting technique, in which paint was applied to the
canvas in dots of contrasting pigment. A calculated arrangement of
coloured dots, based on optical science, was intended to be
perceived by the retina as a single hue. The entire canvas was
covered with these dots, which defined form without the use of lines
and bathed all objects in an intense, vibrating light. In each
picture the dots were of a uniform size, calculated to harmonize
with the overall size of the painting. In place of the hazy forms of
Impressionism, those of Neo-Impressionism had solidity and clarity
and were simplified to reveal the carefully composed relationships
between them. Though the light quality was as brilliant as that of
Impressionism, the general effect was of immobile, harmonious
monumentality, a crystallization of the fleeting light of
Impressionism.
Signac's later work showed an increasingly spontaneous use of the
divisionist technique, which was more consistent with his poetic
sensibility. Seurat, however, continued to adopt a theoretical
approach to the study of various pictorial and technical problems,
including a reduction of the expressive qualities of colour and form
to scientific formulas. By the 1890s the influence of
Neo-Impressionism was waning, butit was important in the early
stylistic and technical development of several artists of the late
19th and early 20th centuries, including Vincent van Gogh, Paul
Gauguin, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and Henri Matisse.
|
|
|
|
Charles Angrand
Couple in the Street |
Charles
Angrand
(b Criquetot-sur-Ouville, Normandy, 19 April 1854;
d Rouen, 1 April 1926).
French painter. He was trained at the Académie de Peinture
et de Dessin in Rouen, where he won prizes. Although he
failed to gain entry to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris,
Angrand began to win a controversial local reputation for
canvases in a loosely Impressionist manner. In 1882 he
secured a post as a schoolteacher at the Collège Chaptal in
Paris. With this security he was able to make contacts in
progressive artistic circles, and in 1884 he became a
founder-member of the Salon des Indépendants. His paintings
of this period depict rural interiors and kitchen gardens,
combining the broken brushwork of Monet and Camille Pissarro
with the tonal structure of Bastien-Lepage (e.g. In the
Garden, 1884; priv. col.).
|
|
| |
DIVISIONOSM
in painting, the practice of separating colour into individual
dots or strokes of pigment. It formed the technical basis for
Neo-Impressionism.
Following the rules of contemporary colour theory, Neo-Impressionist
artists such as Georges Seurat and Paul Signac applied
contrasting dots of colour side by side so that, when seen from
a distance, these dots would blend and be perceived by the
retina as a luminous whole.
Whereas the term divisionism refers to this separation of colour
and its optical effects, the term pointillism refers
specifically to the technique of applying dots.
|
|
Charles Angrand
Hay Ricks in Normandy
|
|
|
|
 Maximilien Luce
Portrait of Henri Edmond Cross
|
Henri-Edmond
Cross(b Douai, 20
May 1856; d Saint-Clair, 16 May 1910).
French painter and printmaker. The only surviving child of
Alcide Delacroix, a French adventurer and failed
businessman, and the British-born Fanny Woollett, he was
encouraged as a youth to develop his artistic talent by his
father’s cousin, Dr Auguste Soins. He enrolled in 1878 at
the Ecoles Académiques de Dessin et d’Architecture in Lille,
where he remained for three years under the guidance of
Alphonse Colas (1818–87). He then moved to Paris and studied
with Emile Dupont-Zipcy (1822–65), also from Douai, whom he
listed as his teacher when exhibiting at Salons of the early
1880s. His few extant works from this period are Realist
portraits and still-lifes, painted with a heavy touch and
sombre palette (example in Douai, Mus. Mun.).
|
|
Henri-Edmond Cross
The Church of Santa Maria degli Angeli near Assisi
1909
The Hermitage at St. Petersburg
|
|
|
|
|
|
Theo
Van Rysselberghe
(b Ghent, 23 Nov 1862; d St-Clair, Manche, France,
13 Dec 1926). Painter, designer and sculptor, brother of Octave Van
Rysselberghe. He was enrolled in the Academie van Beeldende Kunsten
in Ghent at an early age. In 1879 he became a pupil of Jean-François
Portaels, director of the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in
Brussels, whose Orientalist works he admired. Van Rysselberghe first
exhibited at the Salon in Brussels in 1881. The next year he won a
travelling scholarship and, following in the footsteps of Portaels,
visited Spain and Morocco. With fellow artists Darío de Regoyos and
Constantin Meunier, Van Rysselberghe recorded picturesque scenes of
everyday life. He exhibited these Mediterranean pictures in 1883 at
L’Essor. He attended the historic meeting on 28 October 1883 at
which the avant-garde exhibition society Les XX was created, and at
their exhibition in 1885 he showed the results of a second Moroccan
trip, including the exotic Fantasia (Brussels, Mus. A. Mod.).
|
|
|
Theo Van Rysselberghe
The Reading
|
|
Theo Van Rysselberghe
The Burnished Hour
|
|
|
Theo Van Rysselberghe
Sailboats and Estuary
|
|
|
Theo Van Rysselberghe
Hombre al Timon
|
|
|
|
|
The Taste for Folk Art
As the innovative and experimental artists of Impressionism and
Post-Impressionism flourished, certain strongholds of tradition in
the arts remained intact. One such area was that of folk costume and
decorative design, a reappraisal of which had its roots in the
French Revolution, when the educated classes developed a new
interest in traditional dress. Paintings of village folk and scenes
from traditional rural life were soon in great demand. One of the
most famous of these was the series of pictures commissioned by
Murat, King of Naples, which was used to decorate the royal palace.
Ethnographic studies promoted great interest in the designs used to
decorate everyday objects. These included the ornamental motifs that
were traditionally carved into furniture; patterns embroidered onto
linen, curtains, and clothing; fabric prints; shaped moulds for
bread and butter; jewellery designs; motifs used in lace-making and
knitting; and decorative designs on plates, candles, and religious
objects. The motifs and patterns took the form of flowers, fruit,
fret designs, and stylized human and animal forms. Town dwellers,
trying to cope with the immense changes caused by industrialization
(and offered little by the new art styles), found comfort in the
visual heritage of their rural ancestors. The trend was reinforced
by the municipal authorities, who held events featuring traditional
village games, folk dances, and races.
|
|
|
|
GEORGES SEURAT
Georges Seurat (1859-91) studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in
Paris. His paintings were prepared meticulously and resembled the
"monumental" art of the early Renaissance. He continued the
Impressionists' studies into light and colour, developing
Pointillism, which involved the use of small touches of unmixed
colour. Later, he focused on more linear values.
Seurat died
unexpectedly at the age of 31 - his friend
Signac claimed that he
had "killed himself by overwork".
|
|
|
|
|
Georges Seurat
Bathers at Asnieres
1883-84
Nationai Gallery, London
|
|
|
|
|
|
Georges Seurat
(Encyclopaedia Britannica)
born Dec. 2, 1859, Paris
died March 29, 1891, Paris
painter, founder of the 19th-century French school of
Neo-Impressionism whose technique for portraying the play of light
using tiny brushstrokes of contrasting colours became known as
Pointillism. Using this techique, he created huge compositions with
tiny, detached strokes of pure colour too small to be distinguished
when lookingat the entire work but making his paintings shimmer with
brilliance. Works in this style include “Une Baignade, Asnières”
(1883–84) and “Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte”
(1884–86).
Georges was the son of Antoine-Chrisostôme Seurat, a 44-year-old
property owner, originally from Champagne, andErnestine Faivre, a
Parisienne. His father, a singular personality who had been a
bailiff, spent most of his time in Le Raincy, where he owned a
cottage with a garden (in which Seurat often painted). The young
Seurat lived primarily in Paris with his mother, his brother Émile,
and his sister Marie-Berthe. At the time of the Paris Commune, in
1871, when Paris rebelled against the French state and set up its
own government, the prudent family temporarily withdrew
toFontainebleau.
While attending school, Georges began to draw, and, beginning in
1875, he took a course from a sculptor, Justin Lequien. He
officially entered the École des Beaux-Arts in 1878, in the class of
Henri Lehmann, a disciple of Ingres, whopainted portraits and
conventional nudes. In the school library Seurat discovered a book
that was to inspire him for the rest of his life: the Essai sur les
signes inconditionnels del'art (1827; “Essay on the Unmistakable
Signs of Art”), by Humbert de Superville, a painter-engraver from
Geneva; it dealt with the future course of aesthetics and with the
relationship between lines and images. Seurat was also impressed
with the work of another Genevan aesthetician, David Sutter, who
combined mathematics and musicology. Throughout his brief career,
Seurat manifested an unusually strong interest in the intellectual
and scientific bases of art.
In November 1879, at the age of 20, Seurat went to Brest to do his
military service. There he drew the sea, beaches, and boats. When he
returned to Paris the following autumn, he shared a studio with
another painter, Édmond-François Aman-Jean, who then joined him in
Lehmann's class. But Seurat and Aman-Jean departed from the policies
of the École des Beaux-Arts in admiring the warm landscapes of Jean-Baptiste
Millet at the Louvre. The two friends often frequented dance halls
and cabarets in the evening, and in spring they took the passenger
steamer to the island of La Grande Jatte, the setting of Seurat's
future paintings. Seurat exhibited at the official Salon—the
state-sponsored annual exhibition—for the first time in 1883. He
displayed portraits of his mother and of his friend Aman-Jean, and
in that same year he began his studies, sketches, and panels for
“Une Baignade, Asnières.” When the picture was refused by the jury
of the Salon in 1884, Seurat decided to participate in the
foundation of the Groupe des Artistes Indépendants, an association
“with neither jury nor prizes,” where he showed his “Baignade” in
June.
During this period, he had seen and been strongly influencedby the
monumental symbolic paintings of Puvis de Chavannes. He also met the
100-year-old chemist Michel-Eugène Chevreul and experimented with
Chevreul's theories of the chromatic circle of light and studied the
effects that could be achieved with the three primary colours,
yellow, red, and blue, and their complements. Seurat fell in with
Paul Signac, who was to become his chief disciple, and painted many
rough sketches on small boards in preparation for his masterpiece,
“Sunday Afternoon on theIsland of La Grande Jatte.” In December 1884
he exhibited the “Baignade” again, with the Société des Artistes
Indépendents, which was to be of immense influence in the
development of modern art.
Seurat spent the winter of 1885 working on the island of La Grande
Jatte and the summer at Grandcamp, in Normandy. The Impressionist
master Camille Pissarro, who was temporarily converted to the
technique of Pointillism, was introduced to Seurat by Signac during
this period. Seurat finished the painting “La Grande Jatte” and
exhibited it from May 15 to June 15, 1886, at an Impressionist group
show. Thispicture demonstration of his technique aroused great
interest. Seurat's chief artistic associates at this time, painters
also concerned with the effects of light on colour, were Signac and
Pissarro. The unexpectedness of his art and the novelty of his
conception excited the Belgian poet Émile Verhaeren. The critic
Félix Fénéon praised Seurat's method in an avant-garde review. And
Seurat's work was exhibited by the eminent dealer Durand-Ruel in
Paris and in New York City.
In 1887, while he was temporarily living in a garret studio, Seurat
began work on “Les Poseuses.” This painting was to be the last of
his compositions on the grand scale of the “Baignade” and “La Grande
Jatte”; he thought about adding a “Place Clichy” to this number but
abandoned the idea. In the following year he completed “Les Poseuses”
and also “La Parade.” In February 1888 he went to Brussels with
Signac for a private viewing of the exposition of the Twenty (XX), a
small group of independent artists, in which he showed seven
canvases, including “La Grande Jatte.”
Seurat participated in the 1889 Salon des Indépendants, exhibiting
landscapes. He painted Signac's portrait at this time. His residence
at this point was in the Pigalle district, where he lived with his
mistress, Madeleine Knobloch, a girl of 21. On Feb. 16, 1890,
Madeleine presented him with a son, whom he officially acknowledged
and entered in the register of births under the name of
Pierre-Georges Seurat. During that year Seurat completed the
painting “Le Chahut,” whichhe sent to the exhibition of the Twenty
(XX) in Brussels. During that period he also painted the “Jeune
Femme se poudrant,” a portrait of his mistress, though he continued
to conceal his liaison with her even from his most intimate friends.
He spent that summer at Gravelines, near Dunkirk, where he painted
several landscapes and planned what was to be his last painting, “Le
Cirque.”
As if from some sort of premonition of his impending death, Seurat
showed the uncompleted “Cirque” at the eighth Salon des Indépendants.
As an organizer of the exhibition, he exhausted himself in the
presentation and hanging of the works. He caught a chill, developed
infectious angina, and, before the exhibition was ended, he died on
Easter Sunday 1891. On the following day Madeleine Knobloch
presented herself at the town hall of her district to identify
herself as the mother of Pierre-Georges Seurat. The child, who had
contracted his father's contagious illness, died April 13, 1891.
Seurat was buried in the family vault at Père Lachaise cemetery. In
addition to his seven monumental paintings, he left 40 smaller
paintings and sketches, about 500 drawings, and several sketchbooks.
Though a modest output in terms of quantity, they show him to have
been among the foremost painters of one of the greatest periods in
the history of art.
Pierre Courthion
|
|
|
|
PAUL SIGNAC
Together with Seurat,
Paul Signac (1863-1935) was a founder of the
divisionist technique of Pointillism. With
Seurat and
Redon, he
established the Societe des Artistes Independants in 1884. An
acknowledged master of Neo-Impressionism, he wrote the definitive
account of the theories of the movement in 1899. Towards the end of
the century, he painted in a more abstract style, using patches of
brilliant colour in an attempt to achieve greater depth of
expression.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Paul Signac
(Encyclopaedia Britannica)
born November 11, 1863, Paris, France
died August 15, 1935, Paris
French painter who, with Georges Seurat, developed the technique
called pointillism.
When he was 18, Signac gave up the study of architecture for
painting and, through Armand Guillaumin, became aconvert to the
colouristic principles of Impressionism. In 1884 Signac helped found
the Salon des Indépendants. There he met Seurat, whom he initiated
into the broken-colour technique of Impressionism. The two went on
to develop the method they called pointillism, which became the
basis of Neo-Impressionism. They continued to apply pigment in
minute dabs of pure colour, as had the Impressionists, but they
adopted an exact, almost scientific system of applying the dots,
instead of the somewhat intuitive application of theearlier masters.
In watercolours Signac used the principle in a much freer manner.
After 1886 he took part regularly in the annual Salon des
Indépendants, to which he sent landscapes,seascapes, and decorative
panels. Being a sailor, Signac traveled widely along the European
coast, painting the landscapes he encountered. In his later years he
painted scenes of Paris, Viviers, and other French cities.
Signac produced much critical writing and was the author of From
Eugène Delacroix to Neo-Impressionism (1899) and Jongkind (1927).
The former book is an exposition of pointillism, while the latter is
an insightful treatise on watercolour painting.
|
|
|
|
THE SOCIETE DES ARTISTES INDEPENDANTS
In opposition to the wishes of admission panels of the official
Salons, the Societe des Artistes Independants was formed in Paris in
1884; under the motto "No jury no prizes", it allowed everybody to
submit their work to public exhibition and public scrutiny. Owing
particularly to the initiatives of
Georges Seurat,
Paul Signac, and
Odilon Redon
, the group soon launched the work of the
Neo-Impressionists in their own Salons. In its desire to embrace the
most diverse and innovative artistic experiences of the
Post-Impressionist generation, the society invited the unknown
primitive artist
Henri Rousseau to exhibit in 1886. In the following
year, the group presented work by the Norwegian artist
Edvard Munch. Later, in 1911, the society introduced Cubist painting to the
general public. Interest resided not only in the ideas and talents
of the young artists, but also in the lessons of the great artists
of the past. Homage was paid to
van Gogh in 1891, and the first
Seurat retrospective was held in 1892.
|
Georges Seurat
The Circus
1890
Musee d'Orsay Paris
|
|
|
|
|
THE THEORY OF NEO-IMPRESSIONISM
Paul Signac expounded the scientific theory of the Pointillist
painters in his essay "D'Eugene Delacroix au Neo-Impressionisme",
which gave an interpretation of the expressive and emotive values of
artistic composition. He stressed the value of using only pure
colours, and of mixing them only when adjacent on the colour wheel:
"These colours, in shades between one another and made lighter with
the addition of white, will help give the range of tints of the
solar spectrum and all their hues...."
Signac's advice to
Neo-Impressionists on composition was based on that of Delacroix,
who never started work on a canvas before establishing a layout: "He
will manipulate the lines (direction and angles), the chiaroscuro
(tones) and colours (shades) to fit the mood he wants to
predominate. The dominant line will be horizontal for calmness,
ascending for joy, and descending for sadness; all other
intermediate lines will represent the many remaining feelings. To
add to this interplay of lines, there is an equally expressive and
diverse play of colours: warm shades and light tones go with
ascending lines, while cold shades and dark tones go with descending
lines; a balance of warm and cool shades and pale and intense tones
accompanies horizontal lines. By subjecting colour and line to the
emotion he wishes to portray, the artist will be doing the job of a
poet, a creator."
|
Paul Signac
Portrait of Felix Feneon
1890
Museum of Modern
Art, New York
|
|
see collection:
Georges Seurat
Paul Signac
Henri-Edmond Cross
|
|
 |
|
|
