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 :. | Le Boulevard De Clichy La Neige | Marseilles | Lighthouse | Red buoy | The peace of the dusk |
Related Artists:
Tivadar Kosztka Csontvary
born 1853 - d. 1919) was a Hungarian painter. He was one of the first Hungarian painters to become well known in Europe. Csontvery was born on 5 July 1853 in Kisszeben, Seros County, Kingdom of Hungary (today Sabinov, Slovakia), and died 20 June 1919 in Budapest. His ancestors were Poles who settled down in Hungary. Although Csontvery was obsessed with his Magyar roots, he himself grew up speaking Slovak mixed with German. He was a pharmacist until his twenties. On a hot sunny afternoon, 13 October 1880, e when he was 27 years old e he experienced a mystic vision. He heard a voice saying "you will be the greatest sunway painter, greater than Raphael!" He took journeys around Europe, visited the galleries of the Vatican, then went home to collect money for his journeys working as an apothecary. From 1890 onwards he traveled around the world. He visited Paris, the Mediterraneum (Dalmatia, Italy, Greece), North Africa and the Middle East (Lebanon, Palestine, Egypt, Syria) and painted pictures. He painted his major works between 1903 and 1909. He had some exhibitions in Paris (1907) and Western Europe. Most of the critics in Western Europe recognized his abilities, art and congeniality, but in the Kingdom of Hungary during his life he was considered to be an eccentric crank for several reasons, e. g. for his vegetarianism, anti-alcoholism, anti-nicotinism, pacifism, his latent, but more and more apparent schizophrenia and his cloudy, prophetic writings and pamphlets about his life (Curriculum), genius (The Authority, The Genius) and religious philosophy (The Positivum). Even though later he was acclaimed, during his lifetime Csontvery's visionary, expressionistic style found little understanding. A loner by nature, the master's mental balance was upset by his efailuree impairing his creative power. Little did he know that some years after his death, an entire museum in Paris, Hungary, would be devoted to his paintings, and that worldwide appreciation of his works would be in constant ascendancy. Many painters, e.g. Picasso added a stone to Csontvery's cairn.
Martin Drolling
French Academic Painter, 1752-1817,After receiving initial training from an unknown painter in Selestat, Drolling moved to Paris, where he attended courses at the Acad?mie Royale. He supplemented his education there by studying Flemish and Dutch Old Masters in the collection at the Luxembourg Palace. From the Flemish school he derived his own rich impasto, while the Dutch was to influence him in his meticulous, supremely descriptive and unsentimental style of painting as well as his choice of subject-matter: unfussy bourgeois interiors and frank portraits. Drolling first exhibited at the Salon de la Correspondance in 1781 and again in 1782 and 1789. After the French Revolution he was able to participate in the Salon at the Louvre, despite the fact that he had never become a member of the Academie Royale. He exhibited from 1793 to 1817, although the majority of his works extant today were shown after 1800. From 1802 to 1813 he was employed by the Sevres porcelain manufactory, and many of his designs were engraved.
Thomas Rowlandson
English Illustrator, 1756-1827,English caricaturist, watercolourist, draughtsman and engraver. Although he is commonly thought of as a satirist, most of his drawings are gently humorous, and in some cases objective, records of urban and rustic life. With the exception of a small number of topographical drawings, they are characterized by an abundance of picaresque incidents, whether robust or sentimental, and have much in common with the novels of Laurence Sterne and Henry Fielding, which Rowlandson illustrated in 1808 and 1809.