Pointillism

Galerie Artvera’s Rue Etienne-Dumont 1 - 1204 Genève - [email protected] +41(0)22.311.05.53
www.artveras.com
Artvera’s Gallery Genèva
Pointillism
Divisionism and Neo-Impressionism - 37 oil paintings
11 November 2010 – Spring 2010
From strict Divisionism in the wake of Seurat to the more colouristic Neo-Impressionism theorized by
Signac in his treatise From Eugène Delacroix to Neo-Impressionism, Artvera’s Gallery presents all the
facets of the movement through important oil paintings by its most famous painters :
Paul Signac - Théo van Rysselberghe - Henri-Edmond Cross
Maximilien Luce - Albert Dubois-Pillet - Willy Schlobach - Le Sidaner
One of the sources of Neo-Impressionism, Impressionism indeed, will be illustrated with paintings by
PISSARRO - SISLEY - LOISEAU
while the numerous consequences on the later art or the opening in the direction of Fauvism will be
highlighted by some particular works in the whole production of first range painters such as
METZINGER - AMIET - VAN DONGEN - BONNARD - BARANOFF-ROSSINE
VLAMINCK - PICABIA - CHARCHOUNE
PRESS – practical informations
The numerical photographs of exhibited works or Artvera’s Gallery’s exhibition rooms with high
resolution (300 dpi) can be ordered through email to [email protected]
The text below offers a first knowledge of the content and concept of the exhibition. The new book
published by Artvera’s Gallery, Pointillism, even more complete on the subject, can be received on
demand as an electronic pdf document. It includes supplemental explanations on the scientific and
esthetical theories that inspired Seurat in his research on optical mixing or symbolism of the lines, as
well as the analysis and the complete view of all the exhibited works.
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Pointillism
Chantal Bartolini
art historian
Théo Van Rysselberghe, The Scarlet Ribbon
oil on canvas, – 1906 – 116,2 x 88 cm
Contents :
Pointillism
- Divisionism and Neo-Impressionism
A. History and Aesthetics of the movement


Georges Seurat, the young painter from the Academy with whom all started p.3
Pointillism, Divisionism, Chromoluminarism, Neo-Impressionism, Luminism… Which
term to choose p.7
B. Partial presentation of the oil paintings exhibited by Artvera’s Gallery

Neo-Impressionism reaffirmed, in the wake of Seurat, the drawing and the clarity
of the line p.8
 The Light of the South of France and the Affirmation of Colour p.9
 Signac’s Evolution p.13
 Paris under the Neo-Impressionist Glance p.18
 Pointillism and Fauve Colours p.24
 Le Sidaner - Subtle Pointillism and Poetic Mystery p.25
 Seurat reinforced the drawing, Signac reinforced the colour, both divided p.27
_________________________________________________________________________
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Georges Seurat, the young painter from the Academy with whom all started
In 1884, Georges Seurat (1859-1991) created sensation at the first Salon des Indépendants – an
event organized by the young Society of Independent Artists which had just been created by painters
refused at the official Salon - with a luminous work of great dimensions and long-drawn out, Bathers
at Asnières (1883-84), realized after various studies and drafts: this work revealed itself to be indeed
innovative, both compared with the works of the official Salon as well as with those of the
Impressionists, even though Seurat had not yet fully affirmed his new Divisionist technique.
(not exhibited by Artvera’s)
Georges Seurat, Bathers at Asnières – 1883-84 – 201 x 300 cm – Londres, National Gallery
In Bathers at Asnières, the subtle dot-brushstroke aims most often at creating an effect of vibrating
modulation on the stretch of colour by a juxtaposition of close nuances, but it is still only seldom
divided into contrasting and complementary colours. The contrast of the brushstrokes is played out
more between light and dark rather than opposite colours. The dimensions of this painting alone
carried out in a studio already constituted a rupture with Impressionism which used small sizes for
outdoors and reminds us already that Seurat received a solid academic training at the Paris School of
Fine Arts, particularly in Henri Lehmann’s studio, a disciple of Ingres. The way of painting flesh like
synthetic volumes of great purity brushed by light, as well as asserting the line and drawing in shapes
with extremely clear-cut contours if one considers the work as a whole from the right distance - in
opposition with the Impressionist dissolution of contours at its apogee with Monet - are as many
other signs of Ingres’ heritage.
It is at the time of this first Salon des Indépendants that Seurat became acquainted with Paul Signac
(1863-1935), who painted at that time in an Impressionist style, and became friends with him. There,
he also met Henri-Edmond Cross (1856-1910), Albert Dubois-Pillet (1846-1890) and Charles Angrand
(1856-1926), who were among the first to join the Divisionist movement.
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exhibited by Artvera’s
Albert Dubois-Pillet, Morning on the Marne in Meaux,– 1885-86 – 28,5 x 37,7 cm – oil on canvas
Morning on the Marne in Meaux is an extremely interesting painting by Dubois-Pillet in the sense
that it was elaborated in 1885-86, only one year after the presentation of Bathers at Asnières at the
Salon des Indépendants and more or less at the same time as Sunday Afternoon on the Island of
La Grande Jatte. It shows already a clear division of the brushstrokes on almost the entirety of the
painting, especially in the sky and water. The divided brushstroke sometimes corresponds to a
juxtaposition of contrasting colours, like the rose-tinted glimmers in the turquoise-blue sky or, in a
more subtle way, the stones of the buildings, simultaneously shaded towards warm and cold,
although it still generally comes down to close modulations aiming at creating a coloured vibration,
just like in Bathers at Asnières .
(not exhibited by Artvera’s)
Georges Seurat, Un Dimanche après-midi sur l’île de la Grande-Jatte - 1884-86 - 207,5 x 308,1 cm Chicago Art Institute
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Presented at the eighth Impressionist exhibition in 1886 and then at the Salon des Indépendants,
Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (1884-86, fig.4) appears as the first painting
by Seurat in which he fully applied the new principle of Divisionism. This large painting is the result of
an undertaking that extended over two years and which, like the great history painting, was lengthily
studied and prepared by drawings and drafts. The search for perfection in monumentality makes
Seurat an idealistic artist, just as in the way he transcended the contemporary reality of this Sunday
Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte: the Parisians at rest, workmen, boaters, belles for one
day, petty bourgeois, dogs and soldiers, attain a mythical and almost enigmatic dimension in the
immutability of Georges Seurat’s Divisionism.
After Signac, Cross, Dubois-Pillet and Angrand, the new Divisionist pictorial conceptions, more clearly
affirmed in Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (1884-86), led to new adhesions:
Camille Pissarro and his son Lucien Pissarro, Maximilien Luce (1858-1941), Louis Hayet (1864-1940)
and Léo Gausson (1860-1944). Luce, Pissarro’s son, Gausson and Emile-Gustave Cavallo-Péduzzi
(1851-1917) constituted thereafter what would be later called the Neo-Impressionist Group of Lagny,
from the name of a small village on the edges of the Marne where these artists were used to meeting
and where they organized the Salon des Beaux-Arts de Lagny from 1889 to 1904.
Georges Seurat, the great creator of Divisionism that the critic Félix Fénéon baptized in 1886 NeoImpressionism, was not only inspired by the new scientific theories on colour and optical mixing of
light – theory of Chevreul popularized by Charles Blanc, theory of Maxwell developped and
popularized by Ogden Rood -, but by the aesthetics theoretician such as David Sutter or Charles
Henry.
Here is a short summary of the principles that inspired Seurat in his elaboration of Divisionism :
Michel_Eugène Chevreul, La Loi du contraste simultané des couleurs (1868)
In his practice, the chemist Chevreul, who worked with the dyes of fabrics at Gobelins tapestry
workshop, had realised on the one hand that the proximity of a complementary colour could strongly
reinforce and saturate an adjacent colour and, on the other hand, that two small portions of distinct
colours laid side by side and sufficiently reduced could, seen from afar, blend optically and thus
result in a third colour.
Ogden Rood, Théorie scientifique des couleurs et de leurs applications à l’art et à l’industrie (1881)
translated from Modern Chromatics with application to Art and Industry (1879)
The principal interpellation of this book was, for painters, the very new differentiation between, on
the one side, primary colours in the additive synthesis of light (Red + Green + Blue = White, called
RGB mode in our contemporary era of informatics, audio-visual and theatre spotlights!), brought into
play for the optical blending at a distance from the painting, and, on the other side, primary colours
in the subtractive synthesis of matter, blended on the palette (blue + red + yellow = black, namely
the complete subtraction of light, just as for the CMYK mode, Cyan Magenta Yellow and Key for
Black, in our current quadrichromic printing process). The physicist Maxwell had preceded him in his
description of the additive light, but Rood improved and simplified the comprehension of the system,
particularly for the painter’s non-scientific readership, and published an asymmetrical chromatic
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wheel that Seurat kept. Newton had asserted that the prism broke up white light into a spectrum of
colours and, taking the same process in the opposite direction, Rood showed that the addition of red,
green and blue light led again to white light. Rood consequently also thought that the optical
blending could lead to more luminous colours.
Charles Henry, « Introduction to a Scientific Aesthetic » in La Revue contemporaine (1885)
Charles Henry, The Chromatic Circle Presenting all the Complements and all the Harmonies of
Colours, with an Introduction on the General Theory of Dynamogenesis, in other words: On
Contrast, Rhythm and Meter (1889). Charles Henry was an aesthetician who was closely tied to the
Symbolists and particularly passionate about the mystical question of the Golden Number in nature,
music and fine arts, trying to give some keys for applying it to the proportions, the layout of shapes
and the composition. In this book that had a capital influence on the last masterpieces of Seurat, The
Circus (1891) and The Chahut (1889-90), he also theorized on the symbolism of colours and the
trajectory of guiding lines by associating a particular emotional effect with them : the ascending lines
were Dynamogenic, able to spark off gaiety and movement, just as warm and luminous colours,
whereas conversely descending lines, cold and dark colours, expressed sadness. Halfway, horizontal
lines gave a feeling of calm in correlation with a balance of warm and cold colours, neither too light
nor too dark.
David Sutter, Philosophy of the Fine Art applied to painting, containing aesthetics, its applications,
the law of the harmonious opposites of colours, aerial perspective and the old Venitians painting
manner, etc... (1858). Sutter spoke about, amongst others, arithmetic quantified ratios and
correspondences between painting and music.
David Sutter « Phénomènes de la vision » in L’art (1889), a summary of the scientific knowledge of
the time on colour and optical laws.
(not exhibited by Artvera’s)
Georges Seurat, Le Chahut - 1889-1890
Huile sur toile - 169 x 139 cm Musée Kröller-Müller, Otterlo
(not exhibited by Artvera’s)
Georges Seurat, Le Cirque – 1890-91
Huile sur toile - 185 x 152 cm Paris, Musée d’Orsay
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Seurat was also much inspired by the painter of Symbolist spirit Puvis de Chavannes : he often visited
his studio and he even worked for some months with him. Puvis de Chavannes was then a beacon
painter for a youth in search of renewal, an example both in the Symbolist milieu and for the young
Neo-Impressionists, closely tied in the Parisian intellectual and cultural context of the time. Seurat
admired his great perfectly built and lengthily thought out compositions aiming at an Apollonian
classical ideal, at the antipodes of the spontaneity and simplicity of the Impressionists.
Pointillism, Divisionism, Chromoluminarism, Neo-Impressionism, Luminism… Which
term to choose
to qualify a set of works and artists with similar tendencies? Let us attempt some distinctions:
Divisionism - term used by Seurat - in its strict sense corresponds to the division of the brushstroke
into two contrasting and complementary colours, which leads to a couple of juxtaposed dots but of
opposing colours, not necessarily of the same size, such as red-green, blue-orange or yellow-purple,
or at least strongly contrasting, like pink-blue or yellow-green, destined to result in a third colour
from afar. This principle was undoubtedly too theoretical and constraining to remain pure and
applicable in the long run, so much so that even its creator Seurat, in his short lifetime, did not use it
absolutely, although he applied it the most assiduously of all. One can therefore speak simply about
physically divided and optically mixed dots: brushstrokes of more or less contrasting colours are laid
one beside the other and, seen from afar, mix themselves optically in the spectator’s eyes - rather
than beforehand in the paint on the palette - into one single resulting colour or, if it is not the case,
at least into a coloured vibration. This confers a grain, a weave to the painting.
Neo-Impressionism is an already broader term, since it can correspond to a more flexible
application of the process and evoke both the filiation and the overtaking of Impressionism. It was
used for the first time in 1886 in an article written for the Belgian revue L’Art Moderne by Felix
Fénéon, a journalist and art critic closely tied to the Symbolists who was going to become the most
faithful and most convinced defender of the new movement. Indeed the following year he published
in the review La Vogue “the Impressionists in 1886”, a kind of Neo-Impressionism manifesto, while
engaging himself, just like Signac, Cross, Luce, Van Rysselberghe and Pissarro, in the anarchist
movement. He was indeed one of the principal writers of La Vogue (1885-90), the Symbolist review
directed by Gustave Kahn in which amongst others Mallarmé’s L’Art poétique was published as well
as some of Charles Henry’s famous texts mentioned above, and he didn’t fail to write other articles in
it, as acute as enthusiastic, about the new painting of Seurat whom he had made the acquaintance
with since 1884.
The term Neo-Impressionism was thereafter taken again by Signac, - an artist of a much more
positivist nature and whose first works had been strongly marked by Impressionism - for the title of
his book-manifesto, From Eugene Delacroix to Neo-Impressionism (1899) whereas, after Seurat’s
untimely death, he had become the spearhead of the movement, all the while opening it to a vaster
and less esoteric perspective, that of pure and free colour beyond realism, bearing the future and
heralding the imminent emergence of the Fauves.
As to Camille Pissarro, who adopted the new pictorial approach of the movement during only a few
years before he returned to Impressionism, he simply spoke of Scientific Impressionism.
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Pointillism is a term which has the advantage of including Divisionism while being able to
correspond to a very free, creative and evolutionary application of the process, even diverted from
its initial spirit, whether it be a more decorative Pointillism, as we will see with Cuno Amiet (18681961) or Edouard Vuillard (1868-1940), or dots tending to the patch and glare of colour beyond any
organization in a more casual brushwork. Pointillism is therefore the term we have chosen for the
title of the exhibition in order to include all the paintings and to offer an underlying theme from one
work to the other.
Luminism is a term sometimes used to qualify any artist primordially preoccupied by light effects,
whatever the century, but when Luminism is specified as Belgian, one refers in particular to the
painter Emile Claus, as well as the various artists of the Cercle des Vingt in Brussels. Among these,
Willy Schlobach revealed himself as a true Neo-Impressionist who applied a divided brushstroke to
reproduce a landscape’s particular luminosity. The Cercle des XX (1884-1893) indeed marked the
renewing of art in Belgium: among its founders one counted the future Neo-Impressionists Alfred
Willy Finch, Willy Schlobach, as well as his friend Théo Van Rysselberghe. Van de Velde, more known
as an architect but initially a painter, joined also the movement shortly after. This association of
about twenty artists at the beginning, hence the name of the group, invited each year foreign
painters to take part in its exhibitions. Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne, Renoir, counted certainly among
the guests of the group, but it was Seurat and Signac who were most influential, both by plastic
choice and because of the ideological context: the very strong bond of the Divisionists with
Symbolism - Seurat especially - and Anarchism - Signac, Cross, and Luce, sensitive to Kropotkin’s
ideas. It was in their case a pacifist and nonviolent Anarchism closely associated with an idealistic
vision of art and society, the hope of a future new Golden Age, as we will see further.
The striking vision of A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (fig.4) thus caused, at
the exhibition of the Cercle des XX in 1887, new adhesions to Neo-Impressionism: Theo Van
Rysselberghe (1862-1926), Alfred Willy Finch (1854-1930), Willy Schlobach (1864-1951), Georges
Lemmen (1865-1916) as well as Henry Van de Velde (1863-1857), adopted Divisionism while
insisting, particularly in the case of Schlobach and Lemmen, on the phenomena of light in Nature,
giving authority to speak about Luminism for a good number of their paintings.
Neo-Impressionism reaffirmed, in the wake of Seurat, the drawing and the clarity of
the line
At the antipodes of the Impressionist dissolution of the drawing, a phenomenon particularly obvious
with Monet, from the series of misty Cathedrals to the Nympheas close to abstraction, Seurat was
very sensitive to the perfection, assertion and purity of the line, as a worthy connoisseur of Ingres’
Art via his Master at the School of Fine Arts, Henri Lehmann, precisely a pupil of Ingres. The best
illustration of this is The Models (Les Poseuses), a painting which includes furthermore in its left part
a citation of A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, another painting with a very clear
drawing.
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Jean-Dominique Ingres
The Valpinçon Bather 1808 Paris, Louvre
(not exhibited by Artvera’s)
Georges Seurat, The Models - 1887-88 - Fondation
Barnes, Merion, Pennsylvanie
Boy with Thorn (Spinario)
Ingres, sublime painter of the female nude summarized in the finalissimo of his Turkish Bath,
therefore served as reference for The Models in which Seurat worked on three positions: on the left,
a poser from behind hardly enveloped by a white towel evokes immediately the Valpinçon Bather ;
At the centre of the painting, a front-facing poser tries the elegant Greco-Roman swaying from the
feet to the waist, while on the right the third young woman in profile is seized in a pose not so very
distant from the so famous Boy with Thorn (Spinario) which inspired so many successive versions
throughout the centuries.
exhibited by Artvera’s
Théo Van Rysselberghe – The Scarlet Ribbon, – 1906 – 116,2 x 88 cm – oil on canvas
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The Scarlet Ribbon is clearly the highlight of Artvera’s exhibition and is a master demonstration of
Divisionist art at its highest level. This needs a deep analysis.
Among all the Divisionists, Theo Van Rysselberghe was certainly the most gifted draughtsman
without saying the most virtuoso, always infallible, whether it be the human body in the most
complex positions or portraits perfectly faithful to their model. The Scarlet Ribbon (1906) is a good
example, since the hands and feet, gathered in the more unusual posture of a spontaneous gesture,
just like the light escape of this young girl’s left leg taken three-quarters on, remain perfectly natural
and without suffering the merest awkwardness in this challenge for the painter. Van Rysselberghe
surmounted all the traps and sought here only the grace, off-hand elegance and beauty, both for the
choice of the model, visible on all sides thanks to the trick of the mirror, as for its environment
entirely in harmony in the voluptuousness of the ruffled sheets and coloured hangings. On the level
of the pictorial treatment, this painting is not only Pointillist, it is clearly Divisionist: the skin nuanced
by the light is entirely rendered by means of contrasting brushstrokes, pale blue and salmon or pink
and turquoise green. The brushstroke is also remarkable on the level of the hair, divided into
complementary colours: the brown-reds mingle with the dark greens, but there are also blues
opposing orange, and yet all that results in an optical mixture, appreciated from further, able to
restore the silky effect of this wavy red hair with such power that one wishes to plunge his hand in it.
If the body is treated by contrasting brushstrokes, linen on the other hand is treated by modelling
brushstrokes, that is the juxtaposition of closely nuanced brushstrokes corresponding the varied
shades of identical or close colours: all the ranges of blue and all the ranges of pink for these masses
of fabric, while at the back, the furniture reflected in the mirror makes use of the opposition of
complementary colours again, the green against reddish-brown. The wallpapers and curtains, while
being the fruit of a freer decorative pointillism, nevertheless take up again the pink-purple or bluish
colours of the two sheets, which one also finds for the skin, while the hair, the ground and the
wooded parts of the furniture remain in the russet-red colours. On the level of the painting as a
whole, we thus enjoy both a great harmony of colours, relatively restricted in number, and the
dialectical effect of the global zones of colour which respond to each other either to balance or to
contrast the composition: the pink-blue parts of the skin, sheets and walls on the one hand and the
reddish-brown parts of the hair, furniture and ground on the other hand. It is rare, in front of a
painting, to be facing so much perfection, this on all levels: masterly demonstration of Divisionism,
beauty of the subject, perfection of the drawing, the colour and the composition!
The Light of the South of France and the Affirmation of Colour
After Seurat’s death, Signac gradually freed himself from his influence to find his own way, that of
colour for colour, while becoming the head of the Neo-Impressionist movement and an untiring
promoter of this new painting. From 1887 onwards, he discovered the South of France and its light
ant was seduced, so that he decided to settle in St-Tropez about 1892, not far from his friend Cross
who had chosen to live himself in St-Clair, becoming soon the immediate neighbour of Théo Van
Rysselberghe.
The French Riviera offered to these three essential painters of Neo-Impressionism the contemplation
of vast complementary coloured zones which mutually exalted themselves, intensifying their colours:
the Mediterranean blue opposed to the orange rocks of the shores, all this in the blazing sunset
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which accentuated the contrast even more! In this context of an idyllic almost still virgin nature at
the end of the XIXth century, the Bahters theme was widely treated, particularly by Cross and
Rysselberghe. They aimed at the same time to walk in the wake of Puvis de Chavannes with the
representation a new Arcadia, to develop the theme of the nymphs which was so dear to the
Symbolists and to raise the great challenge of the feminine nude in the turquoise water. Théo Van
Rysselberghe painted also The Ablaze Hour (Provence), initially named Bathers, and Henri-
Edmond Cross Bathers (1899-1902), two years later.
(not exhibited by Artvera’s)
Théo Van Rysselberghe, The Ablaze Hour (Provence) Etude – 1895-97 – 228 x 329 cm
Like The Ablaze Hour (Provence) by Van Rysselberghe, Cross’s Bathers is once again a lengthily
worked large sized painting which needed preparatory studies. Even if it was conceived at the
extreme end of the nineteenth century, almost ten years after Seurat’s death, it appears Divisionist
in the strict sense, even much more than other previous paintings by Cross. The pines in the
background do not mislead, just like the orange colours opposed to blue: we are still, with Cross’s
Bathers, on the shores of the Mediterranean.
exhibited by Artvera’s
Henri-Edmon Cross, Bathers – 1899-1902 – 134 x 132 cm – oil on canvas
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Henri-Edmon Cross, Bathers
(detail of the Divisionist brushstrokes,
juxtaposition of contrasting colours)
Henri-Edmond Cross
Study for Bathers
about 1900
The square format, unusual, allowed the painter to exclusively devote the lower third of the painting
exclusively to the water and its reflections, so as to exhibit all his science of Divisionism. Nothing
professorial, only the magic feeling of moving colourings, from the progressive gliding of the orange
vibrations of the bank’s reflection in the water until the bluish vibrations of its hollow in the halflight. At the median third, overflowing upwards to underline the jump’s movement by ascending
lines, the three learnedly positioned young girls form a pyramid. One is seen from the back, like one
of Seurat’s Models or the Valpinçon Bather , while the two others are practically in profile but are
seized in the midst of movement, like the acrobats of the Circus of the same Seurat: time suspended,
the gesture was stopped in the most perfect position in the eyes of the painter, at the end of a long
study and a long labour of realization. There was nothing nonchalantly spontaneous, only the
ambition of making a unique moment become timeless by using highly researched means according
to Divisionist science, with the same artistic demands as Seurat in his great paintings. Cross
contrasted the colour both on the level of the brushstroke and on the level of the zones of the
composition as a whole, to balance and structure it: the green of the pines answers that of the grassy
banks to reinforce it, whereas the three pink-orange bodies, just like the tree trunks, contrast thanks
to their complementarity the intense turquoise-blue of the sea in the second ground. The same
orange and blue are found, more softened, in the water of the foreground, in the lower third of the
painting. We were then already between 1899 and 1902 but, like a flame return, Seurat’s spirit
seemed to instil once again a more purely Divisionist inspiration to Cross.
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Signac’s Evolution
After Seurat’s death indeed, as we already said, Signac had gradually freed himself from the strict
Divisionism of the Master who had initiated him to it, so as to find his own way, that of colour for
colour. Thus, already from the middle of the Nineties, Signac who continued to spend most of the
year in St-Tropez in the dazzling colours of the South no longer subjected himself to the discipline of
the optical mixing, in which he had ended up finding the defect of a greyness effect. In From Eugene
Delacroix to Neo-Impressionism (1899), Signac expressed the conclusions of his research on the
colour and the new evolution of Neo-Impressionism toward a contrast of the coloured zones rather
than the individual brushstrokes :
“Because complementary colours, which are friends and become exalted if they are opposed, are
enemies and destroy themselves if they are mixed, even optically. A red surface and a green
surface, opposed, stimulate each other, but red dots, mingled with green dots, form a grey and
colourless ensemble”.
From then on, he preferred on the contrary either to widen the brushstrokes, tending sometimes
towards the square, so that one continued to distinguish them equally at a certain distance even if it
meant, if necessary, leaving a little glimpse of the white of the canvas between them, this in order to
be sure that the pure colours did not overlap or to make them vibrate by modulating their colouring
by close colours, reserving the saturating and dynamical effect of the contrast of complementaries at
the higher level of areas and no longer between two juxtaposed brushstrokes. He made also the
brushstroke sing inside a coloured area while exploiting the same range of colours in only one shape.
Therefore, instead of being killed by the division of opposite small dots, the colour redoubled in
power and intensity, spread out by sister brushstrokes over a broader zone.
(not exhibited by Artvera’s)
Paul Signac, Portrait of Félix Fénéon – 1890 – New-York, MoMa
His research of colour for colour also
had the consequence of his no longer
worrying about the sharpness of
contours, from then on very far from
the attitude adopted ten years earlier
while Seurat was alive, when, in
realizing the Portrait of Felix Fénéon
(1890, he had given such a cutting
edge to the lines that the painting had
acquired a graphic dimension.
The capital consequence of the research of colour for colour was, thanks to Signac, the opening of
the way to Fauvism, the incitement for young painters to use the purest and most intense hues as
possible. Luxury, Calm and Voluptuousness by Matisse illustrates very well this assertion:
while the latter was by Signac in St-Tropez during the summer 1904, he was introduced to NeoImpressionism both through theoretical discussions and through the vision of Cross and Signac’s
paintings.
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(not exhibited by Artvera’s)
Henri Matisse, Luxe, Calme et Volupté – 1904-05
98,5 x 118,5 - Paris, Musée d’Orsay
He painted also his own version of bathers, clearly
widened his brushstrokes even leaving white spaces
between them, all the while making the intensity of their
pure colours increase and contrasting the painting by the
use of complementary colours at the level of the zones
rather than the brushstrokes, directly inspired by the last
evolutions of Signac. This work, which was presented at
the Salon des Indépendants in 1905 and immediately
acquired by the latter, was in a way the bridge which
illustrated the capital importance of Neo-Impressionism
in the birth of Fauvism.
In the works of his second creation phase, Signac had concentrated himself on the vibration effect of
large areas covered with only one fluctuating colour, made up by the sum of small brushstrokes with
infinitely close nuances, while intensifying their global colour through their contrast in relation to
another zone. And once again, what could be better to develop this principle than the pink-orange
Mediterranean coast opposed to the turquoise-blue sea!
Even later, in a third creation phase beyond the period of the Fauvism, Signac perpetuated this new
principle: the tendency to contrast by areas rather than on the level of the individual brushstrokes
was also maintained in Signac’s later works, but the colours sought by the painter had softened and,
many years after Fauves’ experiments, appeared much more subtle, as can testify The City, Paris
(1934). In the latter, Signac, so in love with the Mediterranean’s visual atmospheres, applied the
same colours for Paris as for Antibes, refusing the reality of the capital’s greyness, that he preferred
to leave to the late Impressionists!
exhibited by Artvera’s
Paul Signac, La Cité, Paris – 1934 60,3 x 73,1 cm – oil on canvas
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Francis Picabia (1879-1953), inspired by the colours of the South of France in his initial pictorial
research, also tried the Divisionist way in St-Tropez, Sun Effect (1909) with a fascinating result,
exploiting the principle of contrast both on the level of the areas - the pink village facing the blue sea,
the ground yellow under the sun or violet in the shade - and on the level of the individual
brushstrokes - the grass in the foreground.
exhibited by Artvera’s
Francis Picabia, St-Tropez, Sun Effect – 1909 – 81,5 x 100,5 cm – oil on canvas
St-Tropez, Sun Effect (detail, modulating brushstrokes)
St-Tropez, Sun Effect (detail, divided brushstrokes)
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Signac was a great navigator since his youth and always owned a boat. Passionate about the sea, he
not only adored St-Tropez to paint the colours of the South there, but also for the navigation and the
atmosphere of its small port. In 1903, he went to Venice to paint a series of paintings having as a
subject the sea and boats, a prelude to the many other marines carried out during his travels in the
great ports of Europe: Rotterdam, Istanbul, Marseilles, Genoa, etc… After the First World War, Signac
no longer resided in St-Tropez, but he continued nevertheless to stay regularly and for long months
at the seaside, at La Rochelle, in Brittany, in the Cotentin, then in Corsica little before his death in
1935. One even committed him, in 1925, the representation of all the ports of France in
watercolour. The Odet in Quimper is both a marine and a urban landscape with the two
towers cathedral of Quimper, a small town in Brittany. It shows once more the great
evolution of Signac since the first period of Neo-Impressionism while Seurat was still alive.
From then on, Signac had discovered the intense colours of South, so that he chose quite
vivid colours without any greyness even to translate this Nordic town under the heavy sky
full with clouds. The other typical aspects of his colouristic evolution were the lines of the
drawing dissolved in the vibrations, the large brushstrokes tending towards the square or
the rectangle, leaving here and there some white of the uncovered canvas so that colours
couldn’t overlap and mix in a dirty manner.
exhibited by Artvera’s
Paul Signac, L’Odet à Quimper - 1929 – 42,5 x 56,3 cm – oil on canvas
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The jagged coasts of Brittany fascinated so many painters, long before and long after Signac, and
particularly the Impressionists, who wanted to restore the brilliance of the water and light, the
ephemeral visions of the foam and the changing reflections of the rocks at every hour of the day.
Monet painted the famous Cliffs at Etretat several times, the Manneporte or the needle rock, as
well as the rocks of Belle-Île, just like Seurat who was sensitive to the particular carving of the Bec du
Hoc or Gustave Loiseau (1865-1935), the late Impressionist who also carried out his version of BelleÎle.
Claude Monet
Manneporte à Etretat – 1885
Philadelphia Museum of Art
Claude Monet
Les Rochers de Belle-Île – 1886
Paris, Musée d'Orsay
Gustave Loiseau
Les Rochers rouges, Belle-Île – 1904
collection privée
Georges Seurat
Le Bec du Hoc
Londres, Tate Gallery
As for the Belgian Neo-Impressionist Willy Schlobach, he was able to convey the same violence of the
water as Monet in The Cliffs, assailed by a stormy and foaming sea, but he added the contribution of
the Divisionist technique to it: thus the rocks adorn themselves with infinite yellow nuances, green or
purplish in the mist, although we are certain of their global brown colour, while the same
innumerable colours are also found in the sea which nonetheless results as blue. We thus have at the
same time a clear contrast between rocks and sea, which share the space by tracing a large diagonal,
and a perfect balance in homogeneity, since all the colours are found again everywhere. This last
point confers moreover an extraordinary scintillating luminosity to the whole, while making these
dark rocks much more pleasing and tempting plastically.
exhibited by Artvera’s
Willy Schlobach, The Cliffs - 1907 – 61,2 x 70,6 – oil on canvas
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Willy Schlobach, The Cliffs (detail)
Willy Schlobach, View on a lake (detail)
In View on a Lake, Schlobach’s Divisionism couples itself with a clearly Luminist approach and one
can only be fascinated when faced with these rose-coloured mountains in the setting sun, while the
turquoise tides reflect a sky traversed by yellow gleams. The place is not precisely identifiable, but
the atmosphere of this great alpine lake reminds much of the East part of Lake Geneva, where the
mountains are drawn up in bluish ramparts at the edge of the gleaming water. Here the Divisionist
technique is particularly able to convey the coloured faerie of this magic evening..
exhibited by Artvera’s
Willy Schlobach, View on a lake – 1920 - 50,5 x 60,4 cm – oil on canvas
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Paris under the Neo-Impressionist Glance
Monet was the first Impressionist to represent the same view in a series of successive paintings with
different colours each time, this in order to capture the light at various times of the day and to thus
emphasize the paramount importance of the light and surrounding circumstances in the definition of
an object’s colours. He started with his series of haystacks, then there were cathedrals, Breton
coasts, St-Lazare train station and still others.
With the same aim of showing multiple colourings of the Parisian sky from
dawn to dusk, the Divisionist painter Gustave Cariot realized several views
of The Roofs of Paris at different times of the day, whilst preserving a
strictly identical drawing from one to the other. His Divisionism offers a
great fineness of grain and is very subtle on the level of the colours which
seem to glide from one to the other into the sky’s infinite nuances. Apart
from the sky, he did not apply everywhere the opposition of
complementaries on the level of the individual brushstroke, preferring to
modulate colours and gradations relatively close to each other inside a
shape, which was the sign of the more colourist evolution of NeoImpressionism in 1899, the year Signac’s treaty was published. However,
contrary to the latter, he did not widen the brushstroke and maintained
some realism in the choice of colours, while taking care of the decorative
and seductive aspect of the dotted texture. The perspective effect is
remarkable, while the painting is cut in two parts: on the one hand roofs
between light and shade for which the painter clearly exploited the
contrast of the areas, increasingly small and blurred as one goes deeper
into the painting, and on the other hand the vast sky like a great uniform
beach without a single cloud, the colours of which nevertheless subtly
evolve from one edge to the other, from yellow-orange to mauve.
Gustave Cariot
The Roofs of Paris - serie
exhibited by Artvera’s
Gustave Cariot The Roofs of Paris, Sunset – 1899 – 47 x 62,5 cm – oil on canvas
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Maximilien Luce, a Divisionist from the very beginning by Seurat’s and Signac’s sides, also showed, in
Montmartre, Rue des Saules (1894) an assertion of colour and a certain freedom with respect to
strict Divisionism, since he applied the contrast of complementaries on the level of the brushstroke
only in certain areas such as the wall or the ground of the left lower corner: the coldness of blue in
the shade is opposed to the heat of orange in the light. For the sky, the house or the trees on the
other hand, the painter essentially selected close and very realistic colours: the trees are certainly
scattered with some red points here and there to contrast the green, but they are nevertheless made
up essentially of green brushstrokes, from green-yellow to dark green. It is the same for the sky
which is modulated entirely according to the purplish blue-greys in a very homogeneous range.
exhibited by Artvera’s
Maximilien Luce, Montmartre, Rue des Saules – 1894 – 51 x 79,4 cm – oil on canvas
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Paris, Animated Street in the Evening, carried out two years later, shows in Luce an even more
flexible approach to Divisionism than before, almost as free as Van Gogh’s of whom one feels a some
influence here, particularly for the night lighting. Like in the paintings of the Dutch Master, the light
indeed seems to explode then to wind up at once in a circular motion to form balls of blazing energy.
Luce reconstituted the vibrating atmosphere of nocturnal Paris at dusk, in the last yellow and pink
gleams which enabled him to dot a subtly multicoloured and fairy-like sky.
exhibited by Artvera’s
Maximilien Luce, Paris, Animated Street in the Evening – 1896 - 55,5 x 75 cm – oil on canvas
(not exhibited by Artvera’s)
Vincent Van Gogh, La Nuit étoilée – 1888
Paris, Musée d'Orsay
(not exhibited by Artvera’s)
Vincent Van Gogh, Terrase de café le soir à Arles – 1888
Musée Kröller-Müller, Otterlo, Pays-Bas
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exhibited by Artvera’s
Vladimir Baranoff-Rossiné, Sunset on the Dniepr – 1907-08 – 64 x 86 cm – oil on canvas
Giovanni Segantini
Ave Maria a trasbordo – 1886
120 x 93 cm
St-Gall, Kunstmuseum
In Sunset on the Dnieper (1907-08) by Vladimir
Baranoff-Rossiné, the sun is on the contrary a fixed centre
from which innumerable long and fine rays irradiate in all
directions, penetrating both ground and sky, in a more
mystical and contemplative approach of the landscape.
Even if the painter knew the latest evolutions of Art in
France well, like most of the Russian artists at the dawn of
the Twentieth century - this thanks to travel, reviews,
international exhibitions organized in Moscow or
Morozov and Shchukin’s collections of contemporary art,
always accessible to the artists - one cannot help also
thinking of Italian Divisionism’s influence when one
observes the way in which the artist depicted the
radiating of the sun.
Italian Divisionism appeared in public since 1891, at the
time of the Prima Triennale di Brera in Milan, with the
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painters Giovanni Segantini, Gaetano Previati, Angelo
Morbelli and Emilio Longoni. Their paintings clearly
distinguished themselves from the French tendencies,
with long fine brushstrokes and special attention to the
radiating of light in a Symbolist spirit, especially by
Giovanni Segantini. The latter carried out two versions of
Gisuseppe Pelizza da Volped
Il Sole nascente - 1904
155 x 155
Rome, Galleria Nazionale di Arte Moderna
Giacomo Balla
Lampada ad arco - 1909-11
174,7 x 114,7 cm
New-York, MoMA
his famous Ave Maria a trasbordo, the first in 1882,
then a second in 1886 in which, following the advice of
Grubicy de Dragon, Divisionist painter, Milanese gallerist,
patron and influencing critic knowing Chevreul and Rood’s
theories well, he very slightly varied the colour of the
luminous rays - reds, yellows and white - with the aim of
obtaining an optical mixture. In his wake, Giuseppe
Pellizza da Volpedo painted a few years later in the same
Symbolist spirit The Rising Sun (1904), then finally
Giacomo Balla his Lampada ad arco (1909-11) between
Divisionism and Futurism. The Futurist Umberto Boccioni
was Divisionist like Balla at his beginnings and moreover
studied in Rome in his workshop. They were both strongly
marked by Segantini and Pellizza da Volpedo and it is
precisely through Boccioni that a first bond between
Russian and Italian innovative artists was established at
the beginning of the Twentieth century. Boccioni took
indeed two long trips to Russia, remaining especially in
Moscow, but also in Saint Petersburg: the first in 1906-07,
then the second for several months in 1907-08. He then
painted a Self-portrait with a Kolbak.
Umberto Boccioni
Selfportrait with kolbak – 1908
Milan, Pinacoteca di Brera
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Pointillism and Fauve Colours
We saw previously that Signac and Cross’s colourist
evolution had to some extent prepared the later
emergence of Fauvism. In 1906-07, approximately when
Cross carried out The Round and Young Woman,
preparatory studies for The Clearing, a painting of
greater dimensions, it was considered done since the
Fauves had already largely revealed to the public - since
1905 at the time of the Salon d’Automne - their new
pictorial approach based on contrasts of roaring colours.
Seduced by their audacity, Cross followed and
magnificently amalgamated, in The Round and Young
Woman, Pointillism and Fauve colours.
Henri-Edmond Cross The Clearing – 1907-07
62 x 130 cm - Cologne, Collection Corboud
His interest for the female nude must also be put in relation with the nymph theme, since this is
exactly what it is about, and in particular with Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy (1872), a major
book because of the impact it had all over Europe and that must necessarily be put directly in
relation with the multiplication of paintings or poems having nymphs, fauns, music and dance as
themes, from Mallarmé’s Afternoon of a Faun (1876) to Matisse’s Dance and Music (1909-10),
ordered by the Russian collector Shchukin. Moreover Matisse envisaged his Dance in the form of a
round, as in The Clearing (1906-07). Cross celebrated also nymphs free in nature, drunk through
music and dancing in the Dionysiac joy of a rediscovered paganism under Apollo’s sun!
Henri-Edmond Cross
Young Woman (46,4 x 55cm) et The Round (46,4 x 55cm ) – two studies for The Clearing – 1906-07 –
oil on canvas - both exhibited by Artvera’s
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Young Woman and The Round are indeed remarkable, because beyond the Fauve colours and
Pointillist brushstroke, Cross attempted to represent the glares of golden light in the areas nonshaded by the foliage, which conferred energy, heat and joy to the scene. The bodies were thus
carved by highly contrasting colours, from the fire of the yellow-orange to the coolness of the bluegreens, while being enhanced here and there by blotches of an incandescent whiteness or subtly
pinkish. And all these colours respond to each other and are found in the vegetation. If one compares
these studies to The Clearing (1906-07), the more ambitious painting that they were supposed to
prepare, one notices that they are not only perfectly autonomous and achieved paintings to which
the study term is hardly appropriate, but that they are even more alluring because of their much
more intense colouring and their perfect chromatic balance. In The Clearing on the other hand, the
round is so whitened by the sun, that it appears toned down and loses the striking effect of blotches
of white light in the midst of pure colours, so successful in The Round.
It was also in 1906 that the critic Felix Fénéon became the artistic director for Modern Art of the
famous Bernheim-Jeune Gallery, this until his withdrawal in 1925. He could therefore offer a direct
support to his Neo-Impressionist friends Signac and Cross by developing for them a sort of contract
guaranteeing them both minimum wages and artistic freedom. Always perspicacious and without
sectarianism in his way of evaluating the artists, he also collaborated with Matisse, Van Dongen,
Bonnard, Vuillard, before organizing in 1912 the first Futurist exhibition in Paris.
Le Sidaner - Subtle Pointillism and Poetic Mystery
Henri Le Sidaner The Sunday – 1898
112 x 192 - Musée de Douai
After his youth spent in Dunkirk, Le Sidaner
received an academic education at the Paris
School of Fine Arts in Cabanel’s studio by
whom he was taught until 1888. Two years
later, he became friends with Emile Claus,
the Master of Belgian Luminism, and became
passionate very early for subtle light effects,
from dawn to dusk, but rather, at first, in a
spirit of Symbolist and spiritualistic mystery
as in The Sunday (1898). The painter paid
attention to Impressionism as soon as he left
the School of Fine Arts, but his Impressionist
brushstroke was only very gradually adopted
and only really affirmed itself in the last
years of the Nineteenth Century.
Emile Claus – Trees along the Lys – 1892 – Coll. Dexia
To tell the truth, one should rather speak about Impressionist Pointillism, since the painter profited
so much from Neo-Impressionism’s contributions: the brushstroke’s texture was indeed refined and
dotted, the optical mixture principle also very present, inviting the observer to stand at a distance,
but it was done with similar colours in very soft associations and generally conforming with reality 25
in opposition to the more sharp and pure colours of late Neo-Impressionism -, or at least
conforming with the projection of another superior reality, as in The Sunday. Emil Claus was
certainly a very important example for Le Sidaner, in particular for the subtlety of light, colour and
brushstroke effects, such as one could appreciate in Trees along the Lys (1892), in 1892 already.
Le Sidaner’s franker assertion of Impressionist Pointillism coincided with his stay of almost two years
in Bruges (1898-99), a Nordic water town with rare atmospheres, which deeply marked him on the
personal and aesthetic levels. He depicted the triangular canals and houses in the mist, evening or
morning, in a ghostly atmosphere of a city without inhabitants.
In the first years of the Twentieth Century, the painter’s research was more and more directed
towards the realistic description of a magic instant during which objects appeared under a particular
light, maintaining the feeling of intimacy and mystery, but giving up the more Symbolist and
spiritualist dimension of The Sunday. The characters, often present in the paintings still made in the
Nineteenth Century, disappeared completely within a few years. The painter was only interested in
the subtle effects of light for light, in the extreme refinement of colours and the soft harmonies of his
particular optical mixtures, while remaining faithful to the academic realism of drawing and
perspective. He bought a house in Gerberoy to this end, in the French countryside, and planted there
the studied scenery of a great quantity of paintings: the intimacy of a room, the glimmer of windows
in the twilight, tables learnedly arranged inside or outside, quietude in the garden, nature asleep
under the moonlight, flowers and trees, old stones… Like Giverny for Monet, Gerberoy provided all
the subjects at every hour of the day and night and he resided there until his death in 1939. It was
enough to wait for the particular luminous magic moment and to know how to collect the poetic
dimension of objects in rare atmospheres, which Le Sidaner carried out magnificently in Le Café du
Port (1923) and The Table, Red Harmony (1927).
The Table, Red Harmony, as its title indicates, is
exhibited by Artvera’s
completely painted in chromatic ranges from pink to
maroon and orange to vermilion, except for a white
plate, and yet the drawing, the perspective and the
colours remain perfectly realistic, without the least
desire to push colour. But the painter learnedly chose
the objects to be painted: they are all red, pink or
carmine, positioned in quite precise places on the table,
perfectly balanced. The act of creation began in fact
already at the time when the painter composed his still
life - future subject of the painting to be painted - in the
three-dimensional reality of his house in Gerberoy!
Perhaps he drew the curtains to filter the light or lit a
lamp… he initially created the poetically bewitching
atmosphere, then he painted it according to his subtle
art, according to his realistic Impressionist Pointillism !
Henri Le Sidaner, The Table, Red Harmony
1927 – 92,1, x 73 cm – oil on canvas
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exhibited by Artvera’s
Henri Le Sidaner, Le Café du port – 1923 – 140,3 x 93,7 cm – oil on canvas
The Café du Port plays more on contrast, consequently coming closer to Divisionism, with a
foreground depicting the tablecloth inundated by the last rosy rays of sun and a background in greyturquoise harmonies disappearing already in the shadows. But to unify the whole, turquoise
brushstrokes find themselves nevertheless on the tablecloth in the shaded folds, juxtaposed with the
orange areas, while pinks darkened by the twilight fill some shapes in the background. A figure - rare
occurrence in Le Sidaner in 1923 – evanescent for sure, leaves or returns in the distance, perhaps
without any link to the table which the painter perfectly prepared only for his painting, for the health
of art!
Seurat reinforced the drawing, Signac reinforced the colour, both divided
If true Divisionism was essentially practised from 1886 to Seurat’s death, whose masterpiece The
Cirque , last unfinished point d’orgue, is the most perfect and most complete achievement, NeoImpressionism, then more largely Pointillism, were truly conjugated in all modes and in all the
possible contexts, thus offering an infinite variety of new means to the later artists who often
creatively amalgamated various plastic approaches to find their own way. Seurat reinforced the
drawing, Signac reinforced the colour, both of them divided.
Chantal Bartolini
Art historian in Geneva
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