Paul Signac (1863 - 1935) | French Pointillist | 17 Paintings

Paul Signac was a French post-impressionist painter who, along with Georges Seurat developed the theory and style of Pointillism.

Signac was born in Paris in 1863, the only child of wealthy parents. In 1879, at the age of 16, he visited the fourth Impressionist exhibition, where he saw the work of Monet, Pissarro etc. He began sketching in front of a work by Degas, only to find himself being thrown out by Gauguin with the words, ‘We don’t copy here Monsieur’! Unperturbed, and after also visiting a solo exhibition of Monet, the next year, following the death of his father, Signac left school deciding he would become a painter.

He began working around Montmartre in Paris, painting in the style of the Impressionists who had so touched him. At the age of 21 he exhibited at the first Salon des Indépendants. It was here that he met Georges Seurat for the first time. Together they began to develop the theories of chromoluminarism, or divisionism. This was the idea that colours could be mixed in the eye rather than on the palette. Pointillism, as the style would be come to be known following a scoffing review of the critical Georges-Albert Aurier, is merely that specific form of divisionism that uses small points of colour. Seurat and Signac began to paint in this style from 1885, together with Camille Pissarro whom Signac had come to know. In 1886, at the request of Pissarro, Seurat and Signac exhibited at the eighth and final Impressionist exhibition. They called themselves Neo-Impressionists (a term coined by Signac’s friend Félix Fénéon and embraced by Signac). The following year he met Vincent van Gogh and worked with him painting in the Parisian suburbs.

Signac was a keen sailor leading him to visit many of the ports around France and further afield, which became the subjects of many of his paintings. The then small town of St Tropez particularly captured his imagination, so much so that he bought a villa there declaring, “I could work here for the rest of my life”.

Signac was not only dedicated to painting; he was an avid art collector, organised exhibitions, wrote on art theory, and was an enthusiastic Anarchist. This political leaning appears in several of his paintings. In 1890 he painted the fantastical portrait of his friend, writer, art critic and fellow Anarchist, Félix Fénéon. In 1895 he painted the picture ‘In the Time of Hamony’, originally titled ‘In the Time of Anarchy’, of he was forced to change the name to have it accepted by galleries. And in 1899 he painted ‘Le Démolliseur’. In this painting, the pick-axe wielding giant is not just demolishing a building, he is demolishing society!

Signac’s early pointillist works shared a very similar style to Seurat and Pissarro; indeed this was one of the criticisms of attendants at the eighth Impressionist exhibition. In later works he developed a characteristic style, applying the paint more thickly in small rectangular patches rather than points, giving a much more textured appearance. In his later years he would focus more on watercolours rather than oil paintings. Signac died in 1935 aged 71.

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