Paul Signac and artworks

BIOGRAPHY

11 November 1863: Paul Signac was born in Paris, to a family of bourgeois merchants.

1880: Although his family wished him to pursue architecture as a career, Signac left high school before he had completed his final exams to focus on becoming an artist. He moved to Montmartre and immersed himself in the work of the Impressionists and Claude Monet. He met Berthe Roblès, who he would marry ten years later, who happened to be a distant cousin of Camille Pissaro.

1882-1883: His first works depicted the views from Montmartre and Asnières-sur-Seine (his family home), and studies of women, notably of Berthe Roblès. His painting was heavily influenced by Monet.

1884: He showed his first canvas at the Salon des Indépendants, which was located in the courtyards of the Tuileries, and participated in the foundation of the Société des Artistes Indépendants. He befriended Georges Seurat, who was to have a great influence on him. At this time he also encountered Pissaro.

December 1886: Seurat, Signac, and Pissaro had their work shown at the time of an impressive exhibition organised by the Société des Artistes Indépendants. Their techniques were completely different; they painted using slight brushstrokes, and juxtaposed their pure colours. It was the technique known as Divisionism. The term Neo-Impressionism was used for the first time by the art critic Félix Fénéon.

1887: Signac felt a strong attachment to the sea and painted numerous seascapes. He moved to the South of France and encountered Van Gogh.

1889: He spent the summer at the Mediterranean coast, visiting Van Gogh who was also located there.

1891: After Seurat’s death, Signac left Paris for Brittany, and then left to settle in Saint-Tropez with his wife and his mother. He painted his first luminous watercolours and tried his hand at large decorative paintings.

1893: After the publication of the first edition of Delacroix’s Journal, Signac decided to also write a journal. In this, he explained the evolution of his own work and his doubts as well as his reflections on being an artist during that period. He also renounced the practice of painting outdoors.

1896: He drafted From Eugène Delacroix to Neo-Impressionism, a work in which he explained the technique which inspired Neo-Impressionism, appearing in 1899.

1902: He showed one hundred watercolours at Siegfried Bing’s art gallery.

1908: He became President of the Société des Artistes Indépendants, and so remained until his death. In this year certain painters embarked on a pilgrimage to Signac’s home in Saint-Tropez, notably Matisse and Maurice Denis. He also travelled to Venice.

1911: He exhibited his watercolours The Bridges of Paris at the Bernheim-Jeune gallery. Watercolours took precedence over oil paintings.

1915: He moved to Antibes and was named Peintre officiel de la Marine.

1929: He started a series of watercolours of the French ports, which led him to visit numerous coastal regions.

15 August 1935: Signac died, aged 72, following a prolonged illness.

DOCUMENTS

Divisionism

The belief that the Neo-Impressionists are artists who cover their canvasses with small multicoloured dots is a fairly widespread misconception. We will demonstrate later, but affirm now, that this mediocre process of dots has nothing in common with the aesthetics of the painters who we are here championing, nor with their employed technique of Divisionism.

Neo-Impressionism does not stipple, but divides. And yet, to divide is to assure all benefits of luminosity, of colour, and of harmony. This is through the optical blending of uniquely pure pigments (all the colours of a rainbow, and all of their tones), the separation of different elements (restricted colour, colour from illumination, and their effects, etc.), the balance of these elements and their proportions (according to the laws of contrast, degradation, and radiation), and the choice of brushstrokes proportioned to the dimensions of the canvas.

The method formulated into these four points therefore governs colour for Neo-Impressionists, of whom the majority apply most mysterious laws disciplining line and direction to their work, thereby ensuring a harmony of beautiful order.

Thus informed about line and colour, the artist will certainly determine the linear and chromatic composition of his painting by using the dominant directions, tones and hues appropriate for the subject he is about to depict.

Before going any further, let’s refer ourselves to the authority of the clear and distinguished genius of Eugène Delacroix. It was this great artist who enacted the rules of colour, line, and composition which we have just laid out and which summarise Divisionism.

We will examine each part of the aesthetics and technique of the Neo-Impressionists one by one, and then compare them along the