1863-1935 French Paul Signac Galleries Paul Victor Jules Signac was born in Paris on November 11, 1863. He followed a course of training in architecture before deciding at the age of 18 to pursue a career as a painter. He sailed around the coasts of Europe, painting the landscapes he encountered. He also painted scenes of cities in France in his later years. In 1884 he met Claude Monet and Georges Seurat. He was struck by the systematic working methods of Seurat and by his theory of colours and became Seurat's faithful supporter. Under his influence he abandoned the short brushstrokes of impressionism to experiment with scientifically juxtaposed small dots of pure colour, intended to combine and blend not on the canvas but in the viewer's eye, the defining feature of pointillism. Many of Signac's paintings are of the French coast. He left the capital each summer, to stay in the south of France in the village of Collioure or at St. Tropez, where he bought a house and invited his friends. In March 1889, he visited Vincent van Gogh at Arles. The next year he made a short trip to Italy, seeing Genoa, Florence, and Naples. The Port of Saint-Tropez, oil on canvas, 1901Signac loved sailing and began to travel in 1892, sailing a small boat to almost all the ports of France, to Holland, and around the Mediterranean as far as Constantinople, basing his boat at St. Tropez, which he "discovered". From his various ports of call, Signac brought back vibrant, colourful watercolors, sketched rapidly from nature. From these sketches, he painted large studio canvases that are carefully worked out in small, mosaic-like squares of color, quite different from the tiny, variegated dots previously used by Seurat. Signac himself experimented with various media. As well as oil paintings and watercolours he made etchings, lithographs, and many pen-and-ink sketches composed of small, laborious dots. The neo-impressionists influenced the next generation: Signac inspired Henri Matisse and Andr?? Derain in particular, thus playing a decisive role in the evolution of Fauvism. As president of the Societe des Artistes Ind??pendants from 1908 until his death, Signac encouraged younger artists (he was the first to buy a painting by Matisse) by exhibiting the controversial works of the Fauves and the Cubists.  Related Paintings of Paul Signac :. | the jun ction at bois colombes | Fish Market | morning mist | Chapel | The Fem |
Related Artists:
Domingo Garcia y Vasquez
painted Ponta do Cavalao - Niteroi in 1883
Pieter Balten
Pieter Balten (born ca. 1525 in Antwerp - died 1584 in Antwerp) was a Flemish Renaissance painter. According to Karel van Mander he became a member of the Guild of St. Luke in 1559 and was a follower of Pieter Bruegel the Elder. He was a good poet and rederijker, who collaborated from time to time with Cornelis Ketel.
Julius Paulsen
Danish, 1860-1940 Danish painter. He studied at the Kongelige Akademi for de Skenne Kunster, Copenhagen (1879-82), but found the training there uninspired and soon attached himself to more radical artists such as Peder Severin Kreyer and Laurits Regner Tuxen. A turning-point in his career came in 1885 when, with Viggo Johansen, he went to Paris. On the way they visited Amsterdam, where the art of Rembrandt made a great impact on Paulsen; in Paris he showed interest in Courbet and Monet. From 1886 his time was shared between landscape, figure and portrait painting. His first landscape, From the Village of Ry (1886; Copenhagen, Hirschsprungske Saml.), is an early example of his personal blend of Romanticism and Symbolism; it shows a golden sunset colouring the houses and gardens of the small village. His View from the Harbour after Sunset (1891; Copenhagen, Hirschsprungske Saml.) has much in common with Monet, the Copenhagen skyline barely discernible through a deep blue and iridescent atmosphere. A later visit to Paris inspired such sunlit townscapes as Under Pont des Arts in Paris, Midday Sun (1919; Copenhagen, Stat. Mus. Kst), the shimmering, sketchy surface of which is dominated by fresh blues and greens; the painting incorporates a favourite Impressionist motif, the curved filigree of the iron bridge, which both frames the scene and lends it tension.