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 :. | boules player | The River Bank | Impression | The Papal Palace, | The Pine, |
Related Artists:
GRAFF, Anton
Swiss-born German Painter, 1736-1813 Swiss painter, active in Germany. He was a pupil of Johann Ulrich Schellenburg (1709-95) in Winterthur and continued his training with Johann Jakob Haid in Augsburg between 1756 and 1765. He worked for the court painter Leonhard Schneider (1716-62) in Ansbach from 1757 to 1759, producing large numbers of copies of a portrait of Frederick the Great (probably by Antoine Pesne). This was an important step in furthering his career, as were the months he spent in Regensburg (1764-5) painting miniatures of clerics and town councillors. He was court painter to the Elector Frederick-Christian of Saxe-Weimar in Dresden from 1766 and taught at the Hochschule der Bildende Kenste there. In 1771 he travelled to Berlin, where he painted portraits of Jakob Mendelssohn, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing and J. G. Sulzer. Sulzer introduced him at court, which resulted in many commissions. He was invited several times to teach at the Akademie der Kenste in Berlin, but he remained in Dresden. He often travelled to Leipzig, and in summer he frequently went to Teplitz
Henri Lebasque Prints
French Painter, 1865-1937 was born in 1865 at Champign?? (Maine-et-Loire). He started his education at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts d??Angers, and moved to Paris in 1886. Here, Lebasque started studying under L??on Bonnat, and assisted Humbert with the decorative murals at the Panth??on. Around this time, Lebasque met Camille Pissarro and Auguste Renoir, who later would have a large impact on his work. Lebasque's vision was coloured by his contact with younger painters, especially Edouard Vuillard and Pierre Bonnard, founders of the The Nabis' Group and the Intimists who first favoured the calm and quietude of domestic subject matter. From his first acquaintance with Georges Seurat and Paul Signac, Lebasque learnt the significance of a colour theory which stressed the use of complementary colours in shading. Lebasque was a founding member of the Salon d'Automne in 1903 with his friend Henri Matisse. Two years later a group of artists exhibited there including Georges Rouault, Andr?? Derain, Edouard Vuillard and Henri Matisse while keeping solid links with other artists such as Gustave Rouault, Raoul Dufy, Louis Valtat and especially Henri Manguin, who made him discover the south of France. His time in South of France would lead to a radical transformation in Lebasque??s paintings, changing his colour palette forever. Other travels included the Vend??e, Normandie and Brittany, although Lebasque would always prefer the small idyllic villages of the South of France. Lebasque had some commercial success during his lifetime. He worked on the decorations at the theatre of the Champs-Elys??es and of the Transatlantique sealiner. Lebasque died at Cannet, Alpes Maritimes in 1937. His work is represented in French museums, notably Angers, Geneva (Petit Palais), Lille (Mus??e des Beaux-Arts), Nantes and Paris (Mus??e d??Orsay) as well as many more around the world. Famed as a painter of 'joy and light', Lebasque is admired for the intimacy of his subject matter and his unique delight in colour and form.
BUGIARDINI, Giuliano
Italian painter, Florentine school (b. 1475, Firenze, d. 1554, Firenze) Italian painter and draughtsman. He trained in Florence in the workshop of Domenico Ghirlandaio. The influence of Ghirlandaio is apparent in his earliest known works, datable between c. 1495 and 1500, which include part of the altarpiece of the Nativity (Florence, Santa Croce) painted for the Castellani family. Apart from Ghirlandaio, his two most important early influences were Fra Bartolommeo and Mariotto Albertinelli. In 1503 Bugiardini joined the Compagnia di S Luca and began an association with Albertinelli that continued until 1509 when Albertinelli moved to the workshop of Fra Bartolommeo. Bugiardini's paintings of the Virgin and Child (e.g. c. 1510; Kansas City, MO, Nelson-Atkins Mus. A.) show the influence of the balanced classical compositions executed by Raphael in Florence between 1504 and 1508 (e.g. the Madonna of the Meadow, 1505, Vienna, Ksthist. Mus.; La Belle Jardini?re, 1507, Paris, Louvre). From Ghirlandaio's workshop and his study of antique sculpture in the Medici garden, Bugiardini would have known Michelangelo early in his career. Vasari mentioned Bugiardini as among the artists who went to Rome in 1508 to assist Michelangelo with the painting of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel (Vatican) and who were almost immediately sent back to Florence. The influence of Franciabigio is clear in such works as the Birth of John the Baptist (1512; Stockholm U., Kstsaml.; autograph copy, Modena, Gal. & Mus. Estense) in which nature is not idealized, as compared to contemporary works in Rome. The signed and dated Madonna della palma (Virgin and Child with the Infant John the Baptist, 1520; Florence, Uffizi) suggests his familiarity with such contemporary Roman paintings by Raphael and his workshop as the Madonna of Divine Love (Naples, Capodimonte) or the Madonna of the Rose (c. 1518; Madrid, Prado).