Paul Victor Jules Signac (November 11, 1863—August 15, 1935) was born in Paris, France on November 11, 1863. He was a French Neo-Impressionist painter, working with Georges Seurat, helped the pointillist style, they were both pointillist representatives. Before deciding to pursue a career as a painter after attending an exhibit of Monet’s workss, he followed a course of training in architecture. He sailed around the coasts of Europe and painted the landscapes he encountered. He painted a series of watercolors of French harbor cities in later years as well. He loved to paint the water so much that many paintings of the pointillist Paul Signac were of the French coast. He left the capital of France each summer, but stayed in the south of France in the village where he bought a house and invited his friends for the parties.
In 1884, the Neo-Impressionist Signac met Claude Monet and Georges Seurat, he was attracted by Seurat’s the systematic working methods and coloring theory and became Seurat’s faithful supporter, friend and heir with description of method of Divisionist and Neo-Impressionist Signac. Under the influence of Monet, the Neo-Impressionist Signac began to abandon the short brushstrokes of impressionist painting to experiment with scientifically juxtaposed small dots of pure color, eith a variety of colors of dots forming a unified tone painting, which intended to combine and blend not only on the canvas, but in the viewers’eyes. In 1886, Signac met Van Gogh in Paris. In 1887, the two artists regularly painted such subjects as river landscapes and cafes together. In 1889, Signac visited Van Gogh at Arles and he made a short trip to Italy the next year.
The anarchist Signac first discovered this ideas by reading Elisee Reclus, Kropotkin and Jean Grae, who all developed the ideas of anarchist communism. The painting of the anarchist Signac, ”In the Time of Harmony” was originally titled “In the Time of Anarchy”, but political repression targeting the anarchists in France at the time foced him to change it before the work could be accepted by a gallery. Signac enjoyed sailing and began to travel in 1892, from his various ports of call, Signac brought back ibrant and colorful watercolors, sketched rapidly from nature. From these sketches, we can see that his paintings quite different from Seurat’s though both of them were pointillist: Signac painted large studio canvases that are carefully worked out in small, mosaic-like squares of color, but Seurat previously useed tiny and variegated dots. His paintings were attemped to use a variety of materials, not only oil paintings, but also for etching prints, lithographs, pen pastel paintings.
On November 7, 1892, Signac married in Paris and Pissarro attended his wedding. In 1897, he bought a house in Paris in November, then he also bought one in Saint Tropedz and built his own studio in December. In 1913, he rented a house at Alpes-Maritimes Antibes and lived with another woman, who gave birth to a daughter for him then, and sent both his houses in Paris ad Saint Tropes to his wife. At the age of 72, Signac died of septicemia in Paris on August 15, 1935. Had been cremated and buried for three days, he buried in the Pere Lachaise Cemetery on August 18.
No matter had been called pointillist Paul Signac, or Neo-Impressionist Signac, anarchist Signac, what he left for us not only a great deal of paintings, but also abundant theoretical writings, such as “From Delacroix to Post- Impressionism” pubulished in 1899, and many art exhibitions catalogs. We are here producing oil painting reproductions of Signac’s works on our site, all painted by our artists themselves. If see like or need, please contact us !