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 :. | River's Edge The Seine at Herblay | Forest | Wave | Breakfast | Port of La Rochelle |
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Arvid Johanson
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HEYDEN, Jan van der
Dutch Baroque Era Painter, 1637-1712 Dutch painter, draughtsman, printmaker and inventor. In 1650 he moved to Amsterdam with his family; his father, a Mennonite, who had pursued various occupations rather unsuccessfully, died that year. Jan's artistic training may have begun with drawing lessons in the studio of a relative, perhaps his eldest brother, Goris van der Heyden, who made and sold mirrors; Jan may also have studied the reverse technique of glass painting with an artist in Gorinchem. Painting occupied relatively little of his time, however, although he continued to pursue it throughout his long life. His prosperity was mainly due to his work as an inventor, engineer and municipal official. He designed and implemented a comprehensive street-lighting scheme for Amsterdam, which lasted from 1669 until 1840 and was adopted as a model by many other towns in the Netherlands and abroad. In 1672,
Karl Bodmer
Swiss Painter, 1809-1893,Swiss painter and graphic artist, active in the USA and France. His earliest exposure to art probably came from his uncle, the landscape painter and engraver Johann Jakob Meyer (1787-1858). When he was 22, Bodmer moved to Paris, where he studied art under Sebastien Cornu. In Paris he met his future patron, Prince Maximilian of Wied-Neuwied, who was planning an ambitious scientific expedition to North America. Bodmer was engaged to accompany the expedition and to provide sketches of the American wilderness. After touring the East Coast, the party made their way westward via the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to St Louis, MO, and in 1833 travelled up the Missouri River into country scarcely inhabited by white men. On the journey north to Ft MacKenzie, WY, Bodmer recorded the landscape and the groups of Indians they encountered. Having wintered in Ft Clark, ND, they returned to New York and then Europe in 1834.