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 :. | milliners | The peace of the dusk | Forest near St. Tropez | Women at the Well | Cap Canaille, Cassis |
Related Artists:
Kuhn Justus Engelhardt
German artist d.1717
Pieter Lastman
(1583 - 4 April 1633 (buried)) was a Dutch painter . Lastman is considered important because of his work as a painter of history pieces and because his pupils included Rembrandt and Jan Lievens. In his paintings Lastman paid a lot of attention to the faces, hands and feet. Pieter Lastman was born in Amsterdam, the son of a town-beadle, who was dismissed in 1578 for being a Catholic. His mother was an appraiser of paintings and goods. His apprenticeship was with Gerrit Sweelinck, the brother of Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck. Between approximately 1604 and 1607 Lastman was in Italy, where he was influenced by Caravaggio (as were the painters of the Utrecht School a few years later) and by Adam Elsheimer. Back in Amsterdam he moved in with his mother in the Sint Antoniesbreestraat, living next to mayor Geurt van Beuningen. Lastman never married although he promised to marry the sister of Gerbrand Adriaensz Bredero. Because of his health Lastman moved in with his brother in 1632. He died the next year and was buried in the Oude Kerk.
Camile Pissarro
1831-1903