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 Road to Gennevilliers | Cenacle | Impression | lighthouse | Gasometers at Clichy |
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CRETI, Donato
Italian painter, Bolognese school (b. 1671, Bologna, d. 1749, Bologna) Italian painter and draughtsman. His individual and poetic art represents, with that of Marcantonio Franceschini, the last significant expression of the classical-idealist strain in Bolognese painting. His activity was almost wholly confined to Bologna, where he painted decorative frescoes, altarpieces and easel pictures for private collectors. Two qualities are paramount: a perfected finesse of handling and poetic suggestiveness of situation and mood. He sought the ideal beauty of the individual figure and was thus at his best in meditative pictures with few figures; his subjects combine grace of form and precision of contour with flesh that attains the surface delicacy of porcelain and colours that have a mineral-like refulgence.
Bon Boullogne
(bapt. February 22, 1649 - May 17, 1717) was a French painter. Boullogne was born in Paris, a son of the painter Louis Boullogne;[1] he was regarded as the most gifted of his children. He took his first lessons from his father, whom he is thought to have assisted in the Grande Galerie of the Louvre. Through his father, who presented a half-length figure of St John by Bon to Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Contrôleur General des Finances, he was sent to the Academie de France in Rome as a Pensionnaire du Roi. In this capacity, he made copies of famous works, in particular some frescoes by Raphael in the Vatican Loggie, intended for reproduction as Gobelins tapestries. The period he then spent in Lombardy helped to complete his training. He studied the work of Antonio da Correggio and the Annibale Carracci, as well as Guido Reni, Domenichino and Francesco Albani. Bones painting, especially the mythological work, shows great affinities with the work of the Bolognese school, which was also to be found in the royal collections. Also of influence to Bon was Nordic art, as demonstrated in his female portraits framed by plant like motifs, a device taken up by his pupil Robert Tournieres. He died in Paris.
Theodore Roussel
English Painter, 1847-1926 English painter and etcher of French birth. He was born and educated in France and settled in England in 1878, when he quickly established a reputation. Largely self-taught, his few extant early paintings show an eclectic style that combines the techniques of the Old Masters, which he studied in detail, with the subject-matter of modern urban life. In 1885 he was introduced to James McNeill Whistler, his neighbour in Chelsea, London, and in consequence a lifelong friendship was formed. As Roussel was a member of Whistler's London circle his work in watercolour and oil was influenced by the latter in style and choice of subject-matter. His oft-quoted remark that he was a 'pupil of Whistler' is, however, belied by his frequently distinct style, as seen in such paintings as the Reading Girl (1886-7; London, Tate). In 1888 Whistler introduced him to the techniques of etching and drypoint, resulting in such etchings as the Sign of the 'White Horse', Parson's Green (c. 1893-4; see Rutter, pl. xxx). For the remainder of his life he relentlessly pursued the medium, even, like Whistler, designing his own special frames. Always fascinated by the theoretical and practical nature of colour science, he constantly experimented and was an early pioneer of the technique of colour etching in England, producing such works as Dawn.