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 :. | saint tropez | Impression | By Paul Signac | in the time of harmony | Entrance to the Port of Honfleur |
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Franz Wolf
Austrian b.1896
Ralph Eleaser Whiteside Earl
(1785-8 - Nashville, Tennessee, September 16, 1838), also known as Ralph E. W. Earl or Ralph Eleazer Whiteside Earl, was an American painter known as the "court painter" to President Andrew Jackson. Earl was the son of portrait painter Ralph Earl and his second wife Ann Whiteside. He was born c. 1785-88, probably in New York City, and likely received his early training in portraiture from his father, whose naive style is reflected in the younger Earl's earliest works. He traveled to London in 1809, where he studied for a year with John Trumbull and was advised by Benjamin West, learning perspective, anatomy, and three-dimensional illusion. He remained in England until 1814, living with his maternal grandfather and uncle in Norwich and executing portrait commissions. He then traveled to Paris before returning to the United States in December 1815 with the intention of creating grand-scale history paintings on the European model. As preparation for a planned project depicting the Battle of New Orleans, Earl met General Andrew Jackson and visited him at his Tennessee home, The Hermitage, in January 1817. Earl painted portraits of Jackson and his family, and married Mrs. Jackson's niece Jane Caffery on 19 May 1819. She died in childbirth in 1820.
Skovgaard
Peter Christian Thamsen Skovgaard (known as P.C. Skovgaard), (4 April 1817 - 13 April 1875), Danish national romantic landscape painter, was born near Ringsted to farmer Tham Masmann Skovgaard and his wife Cathrine Elisabeth. He is one of the main figures associated with the Golden Age of Danish Painting. He is especially known for his large scale portrayals of the Danish landscape. The family had to leave the farm when he was six years old. They moved to Vejby in north Sjælland where his father earned his living as a grocer. Already as a young child he impressed his family with his artistic abilities. His mother, who had studied art under flower painter Claudius Ditlev Fritsch, gave him instructions in drawing until he was confirmed and could be sent to Copenhagen for training at the Royal Danish Academy of Art . He started his training at the Academy in 1831. He did not think much of this training or of that under private lessons starting in 1836 with J. L. Lund, romantic history painter. More advantageous to him, he felt, were the time he spent learning craft painting; the time he spent visiting the Danish Royal Painting Collection, now the National Museum of Art and studying the classical Dutch landscapes in their collection; the outdoors studies he did with friends Christian Gotfred Rump, J. Th. Lundbye, Thorald Læssøe, Dankvart Dreyer and Lorens Frølich; and the many evenings he spent with other young artists at sculptor and Academy professor Herman Ernst Freundse fashionable house. Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg, Academy professor, former Director and long-standing rival of Lund, although not Skovgaardes teacher, played an influential role by encouraging and arranging field studies for Academy students to paint outdoors, including to Jægersborg Dyrehave, an area which Skovgaard featured several times in his mature work. In 1836 he started at the Academyes School of Model Painting, and exhibited at Charlottenborg for the first time. His painting "Maneskinsstykke med Motiv fra Langebro" ("Moonlight piece with Motif from Langebro") was purchased by Crown Prince Christian Frederick and is now in the collection of the Copenhagen City Museum.