PAUL SIGNAC

Largely self-taught, Signac was first inspired to pursue his career while visiting an Claude Monet (French, 1840-1926) exhibition at La Vie Moderne in 1880. Signac’s early works followed the tradition of Impressionism, but changed drastically after meeting Georges Seurat (French, 1859-1891) in 1884. Signac’s approach transitioned from an intuitive interpretation of the outdoors to a more rigorous examination of paint properties. He was one of the first Parisian artists to settle in St. Tropez on the Mediterranean shore in 1892. Here, Signac’s brushwork became looser and his colours brighter, as he created an idealised vision of rural life that reflected his anarchist sympathies. F

rom 1893 to 1895, he completed the painting Au temps d’harmonie, one of the best examples of Signac’s utopian aspirations, and a prime example of his ability to depict pastoral scenes using his newly-developed Neo-Impressionist brushwork. Signac consolidated his assertion of Neo-Impressionism by writing D’Eugène Delacroix au Néo-Impressionnisme (1899), a text that influenced the work of the Futurists in Italy and the Fauves in France. Although Signac’s work was not widely recognised at the start of his career, by the mid-1880s he had exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants – of which he was a founding member – as well as several other galleries.

Courtesy Bailly Gallery