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 :. | The Jetty at Cassis, Opus | Railway junction near Bois Colombes | Paul Signac, Portrait of Felix Feneon, | Impression | morning mist |
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Jacob Ferdinand Voet
(c. 1639 - c. 1689/1700) was a Flemish Baroque portrait painter. According to the Netherlands Institute for Art History (RKD) he was born at Antwerp as the son of the painter Elias Voet.[1] He travelled to Rome in 1679-1680, Milan in 1680, Florence in 1681, Turin in 1682-1684, and returned to Antwerp in 1684. While in Rome he lived with the painter-engraver Cornelis Bloemaert until he was banned for his portraits of women portrayed with unseemly decollet, whereupon they left Rome together. He undertook a journey to Paris in 1686 where he became court painter until he died there.He is registered as a painter of miniature portraits. According to Houbraken, he made his return journey to Antwerp from Turin in the company of Jan van Bunnik, who he had already met in Rome in the company of Cornelis Bloemaert. From Turin they set out for Lyons, where they met Adriaen van der Cabel, Peter van Bloemen, and Gillis Wenix. They set off for Paris in the company of a third painter who was a good painter of "bataljes" or battle scenes. Houbraken reports that this was Jacob, Jan van Bunnik's brother, but had not mentioned him earlier in his Jan van Bunnik biography. The RKD makes no mention of a Jacob van Bunnik.
Simon Vouet
b. 1590, Paris, d. 1649, Paris.French painter and draughtsman. Although at the time regarded as one of the leading French painters of the first half of the 17th century, he is now known more for his influence on French painting than for his actual oeuvre. He made his reputation in Italy, where he executed numerous portraits for aristocratic patrons and was commissioned for religious subjects. Although the early Italian works show the influence of Caravaggio, his work was subsequently modified by the Baroque style of such painters as Lanfranco and the influence of the Venetian use of light and colour.
Otter, Thomas
American, 1832-90