NEO-IMPRESSIONISM

NEO-IMPRESSIONISM

   Neo-Impressionism is a movement and a style. Neo-Impressionism organized the system of applying separate colors to the surface so that the eye mixed the colors rather than the artist on his or her palette. The theory of chromatic integration claims that these independent tiny touches of color can be mixed optically to achieve better color quality.



Paul Signac (French, 1863-1935). Capo di Noli, 1898.
Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Fondation Corboud, Köln.

   The Neo-Impressionist surface seems to vibrate with a glow that radiates from the minuscule dots that are packed together to create a specific hue. The painted surfaces are especially luminescent.
    Neo-Impressionism was led by Georges Seurat, who was its original theorist and most significant artist, and by Paul Sıgnac, also an important artist and the movement’s major spokesman. Other Neo-Impressionist painters were Henri-Edmond Cross, Albert Dubois-Pillet, Maximilien Luce, Theo Van Rysselberghe, and, for a time, the Impressionist painter Camille Pissarro. The group founded a Société des Artistes Indépendants in 1884.

   The terms divisionism and pointillism originated in descriptions of Seurat’s painting technique, in which paint was applied to the canvas in dots of contrasting pigment. A calculated arrangement of coloured dots, based on optical science, was intended to be perceived by the retina as a single hue. The entire canvas was covered with these dots, which defined form without the use of lines and bathed all objects in an intense, vibrating light. In each picture the dots were of a uniform size, calculated to harmonize with the overall size of the painting. In place of the hazy forms of Impressionism, those of Neo-Impressionism had solidity and clarity and were simplified to reveal the carefully composed relationships between them. Though the light quality was as brilliant as that of Impressionism, the general effect was of immobile, harmonious monumentality, a crystallization of the fleeting light of Impressionism.
Signac’s later work showed an increasingly spontaneous use of the divisionist technique, which was more consistent with his poetic sensibility. Seurat, however, continued to adopt a theoretical approach to the study of various pictorial and technical problems, including a reduction of the expressive qualities of colour and form to scientific formulas. By the 1890s the influence of Neo-Impressionism was waning, but it was important in the early stylistic and technical development of several artists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including Vincet Van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and Henri Matisse.


Characteristic of Neo-Impressionism:

• Tiny dots of local color.
• Clean, clear contours around the forms.
• Luminescent surfaces.
• A stylized deliberateness that emphasizes a decorative design.
• An artificial lifelessness in the figures and landscapes.
• Painted in the studio, instead of outdoors like the Impressionists.
• Carefully ordered and not spontaneous in its technique and intention.
• Subjects about contemporary life and landscapes.

Best Known Artists:

• Georges Seurat
• Paul Signac
• Camille Pissarro
• Henry Edmond Cross
• George Lemmen
• Théo van Rysselberghe
• Jan Toorop
• Maximilen Luce




Georges Pierre Seurat


• Albert Dubois-Pillet

Georges Pierre Seurat ( 2 December 1859 – 29 March 1891) was a French Post-Impressionist painter and draftsman. He is noted for his innovative use of drawing media and for devising a technique of painting known as pointillism. His large-scale work A Sunday Afternoon on the Islanf of the La Grande Jatte (1884–1886) altered the direction of modern art by initiating Neo-impressionism, and is one of the icons of 19th century painting.

Georges Seurat's powerful presence as the leader of Neo-Impressionism resonated among artists for decades. Charles Angrand's self-portrait bears a striking resemblance to Seurat's shadowy sheets drawn in black crayon . Henri-Edmond Cross and Hippolyte Petitjean adapted the Divisionist technique to watercolor painting. In Saint-Clair, a village on the Côte d'Azur near Saint-Tropez, Cross painted radiant landscapes in watercolor, using a vivid palette of saturated color in mosaic-like brush marks. Petitjean's watercolors mastered the art of Pointillism to decorative perfection. In the early twentieth century, Fauve artists turned to Seurat's technique for purity of color. Even abstract painters Mondrian and Kandinsky practiced Pointillism.



Evening Calm

 Paul Sıgnac(French, 1863–1935)
As Georges Seurat's most ardent follower, Paul Signac steadfastly promoted the principles of Neo-Impressionism all his life. Adopting Seurat's system of color harmony, Signac argued for the meticulous application of precise hues in separate strokes of paint, a technique realizing "brilliantly colored lights" across the canvas. An avid sailing enthusiast, Signac favored marine subjects, in both his paintings and watercolors.
is one of a series of five Concarneau paintings made in the summer of 1891. Much in the manner of Monet, these marines successively capture the transitory light of day. In this serene evening view, Seurat casts distant sardine boats in a rhythmic pattern, while closer at hand a tuna boat returns to port. As with other paintings in the series, Signac's palette opposes two complementary colors: yellow (ranging from ochre to orange) and blue (from sky blue to violet). The paintings are further linked by musical subtitles that integrate the works as different movements of the same piece.

Evening Calm, Concarneau, Opus 220