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 :. | Study of Harmonious times | pardon of the newfoundlanders | houses in the port saint tropez opus | Paul Signac: Women at the Well | Two Milliners Rue du Caire |
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William Keith
(Nov 18, 1838 - April 13, 1911) was a Scottish-American painter famous for his California landscapes. Keith was born in Oldmeldrum, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, and emigrated to the United States in 1850. He lived in New York City, and became an apprentice wood engraver in 1856. He first traveled to the American West in 1858, after being assigned to do illustrations for Harper's Magazine. He moved to England briefly, working for the London Daily News.
Philippe Rousseau
Paris 1816 - Acquigny 1887. French Painter. French Painter. French painter. He may have received his artistic training in the studios of Gros and Jean-Victor Bertin, since he credited them as his masters when he exhibited at the Salon. He began exhibiting in 1834 with a View of Normandy (untraced) and for the next six Salons he exhibited landscapes. In 1844 he began to show still-lifes. In 1845 he was awarded a third-class medal, and in 1847 his still-lifes were admired by Th?ophile Thor?, who was one of the earliest critics to recognize Rousseau's debt to Chardin. This influence became the subject for his 1867 Salon entry, Chardin and his Models (untraced, see McCoubrey, no. 15). The work is far grander and more cluttered in its conception than most still-lifes by Chardin and alludes to the master by faithfully reproducing some of his favourite objects within a traditional table-top format rather than by an analysis of his compositional devices.
Hugo Birger
Swedish, 1854-1887 Swedish painter. He studied at the Konstakademi in Stockholm from 1871 to 1877. In 1877 he went to Paris and then spent the summer of 1878 at Barbizon with Carl Larsson, among others. There he painted several spontaneous plein-air paintings, such as Rue Gabrielle (1879; Goteborg, Kstmus.), in which the grey tones are contrasted realistically with exquisite colours. He also painted scenes of Parisian life, such as The Toilette (1880; two sketches in Stockholm, Nmus.), which aroused the interest of his contemporaries when it was exhibited at the Salon that year. Birger art was always conventional in style, allied to French salon painting. He was a master of technique and a brilliant subject painter, creating such scenes as In the Bower (c. 1880; Stockholm, Nmus.).