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 :. | Two Cypress | Bridge | Rotterdam-s tug | Antibes, Evening | Stern |
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Christian Daniel Rauch
1777 Arolsen-1857 Dresden,was a German sculptor. Rauch was born at Arolsen in the Principality of Waldeck. His parents were poor and unable to place him under efficient masters. His first instructor taught him little else than the art of sculpting gravestones, and Professor Ruhl of Kassel could not give him much more. A wider field of improvement opened up before him when he removed to Berlin in 1797; but he was obliged to earn a livelihood by becoming a royal lackey, and to practise his art in spare hours. Queen Louisa of Prussia, surprising him one day in the act of modeling her features in wax, sent him to study at the Academy of Art. Not long afterwards, in 1804, Count Sandrecky gave Rauch the means to complete his education at Rome, where Wilhelm von Humboldt, Antonio Canova and Bertel Thorvaldsen befriended him. Among other works, he executed bas-reliefs of "Hippolytus and Phaedra," "Mars and Venus wounded by Diomede," and a "Child praying." In 1811 Rauch was commissioned to execute a monument for Queen Louisa of Prussia.
Aleksei Savrasov
Russian Painter , 1830-1897
Candido Lopez
(29 August 1840eDecember 31, 1902) was an Argentine painter and soldier. Born in Buenos Aires, he is considered one of Argentina's most important artists. He is most famous for his detailed paintings and drawings of battles of the War of the Triple Alliance, in which he also fought, losing his right arm. As a result, he learned to paint with his left hand. He was already a prestigious artist by age seventeen, and had been taught by the exiled Italian Risorgimento artist Baldassare Verazzi. His paintings of battles reflect his love of detail and showy colors that depict the war in miniature. Many of his works are found in the National Fine Arts Museum in Buenos Aires. He is buried in La Recoleta Cemetery, also in Buenos Aires.