Paul Signac

Paul Victor Jules Signac (1863-1935) was a French Neo-Impressionist painter who, with Georges Seurat, helped develop the artistic technique Pointillism.

A keen sailor, he is best known for his seascapes and views of ports and rivers.

Paul-Victor-Jules Signac was born in Paris on 11 November 1863. His parents wanted him to study architecture, but he preferred to draw the Seine. He was particularly affected by an 1880 exhibition of Claude Monet's work.

In 1884, he met Claude Monet and Georges Seurat. He was struck by the systematic working methods of Seurat and by his theory of colours, and he became Seurat's faithful supporter, friend, and heir with his description of Neo-Impressionism and Divisionism method. Under Seurat's influence, he abandoned the short brushstrokes of Impressionism to experiment with scientifically juxtaposed small dots of pure colour, intended to combine and blend not on the canvas, but in the viewer's eye, the defining feature of Pointillism.

The Mediterranean coast is a major theme across Signac's paintings. He left the capital each summer to stay in the south of France in the village of Collioure or at St. Tropez, where he bought a house and invited his friends. He envisioned the south of France as the perfect location for a future anarchist utopia.

Signac, Albert Dubois-Pillet, Odilon Redon, and Seurat were among the founders of the Société des Artistes Indépendants. The association began in Paris 29 July 1884 with the organisation of massive exhibitions, embracing as their motto, "Neither jury nor awards" (Sans jury ni récompense). For the following three decades, their annual exhibitions flourished and set the trends in art of the early twentieth century. Signac was a guiding force in the Société and was its President from 1908 until his death.

In 1886 Signac met Vincent van Gogh in Paris. During 1887 the two artists regularly went to Asnières-sur-Seine together, where they painted such subjects as river landscapes and cafés. Initially, Van Gogh chiefly admired Signac's loose painting technique. Signac also met Toulouse Lautrec, who was a friend of Van Gogh.

In March 1889, Signac visited Van Gogh at Arles. In 1890, during the banquet of the XX exhibition in Brussels, Lautrec challenged the artist Henri de Groux to a duel as he criticised Van Gogh's works. Signac declared he would continue to fight for Van Gogh’s honour if Lautrec were killed. De Groux apologized for the slight and left the group and the duel never took place.

The following year, Signac made a short trip to Italy, seeing Genoa, Florence, and Naples.

In 1892, he sailed the Garonne River southeast in France to the Mediterranean Sea, spending time in Saint-Tropez.

On 7 November 1892, Signac married Berthe Roblès at the town hall of the 18th arrondissement of Paris. The witnesses at the wedding were Alexandre Lemonier, Maximilien Luce, Camille Pissarro, and Georges Lecomte.

In November 1897, the Signacs moved to a new apartment in the Castel Béranger, which was built by Hector Guimard. A little later, in December of the same year, they acquired a house in Saint-Tropez named, La Hune, where the painter had a vast studio constructed that he inaugurated on 16 August 1898.

Signac experimented with various media. As well as oil paintings and watercolours, he made etchings, lithographs, and many pen-and-ink sketches composed of small, laborious dots.

The Neo-Impressionists influenced the next generation: Signac inspired Henri Matisse and André Derain in particular, thus playing a decisive role in the evolution of Fauvism. Signac himself did not admire the style when it first appeared.

At the 1905 Salon des Indépendants, Henri Matisse exhibited the proto-Fauve painting Luxe, Calme et Volupté. The brightly coloured composition was painted in 1904 after a summer spent working in St. Tropez on the French Riviera alongside the neo-Impressionist painters Henri-Edmond Cross and Paul Signac. The painting is Matisse's most important work in which he used the Divisionist technique advocated by Signac, which Matisse had adopted in 1898 after reading Signac's essay, d'Eugène Delacroix au Néo-Impressionnisme. Signac purchased the work after the 1905 Salon des Indépendants. In 1908 Signac was elected president of the Twenty-fourth Salon des Indépendants.

As president of the Société des Artistes Indépendants from 1908 until his death, Signac encouraged younger artists by exhibiting the controversial works of the Fauves and the Cubists. He was the first patron to buy a painting by Matisse.

In September 1913, Signac rented a house at Antibes, where he took up residence with Jeanne Selmersheim-Desgrange. She gave birth to their daughter, Ginette, on 2 October 1913. Meanwhile, Signac left La Hune and the Castel Beranger apartment to Berthe and they remained friends for the rest of his life. On 6 April 1927, Signac formally adopted Ginette. His granddaughter, Françoise Cachin, was an art historian.

Signac wrote several important works on the theory of art, among them, From Eugène Delacroix to Neo-Impressionism, first published in serial form in 1898. It is an important history of colour and explanation of neo-impressionist technique. It also discusses Johan Barthold Jongkind (1819-1891). Signac also authored several introductions to the catalogues of art exhibitions and many other writings yet to be published.

Politically, he was an anarchist, as were many of his friends, including Félix Fénéon, Maximilien Luce and Camille Pissarro.

Paul Signac died from sepsis in Paris on 15 August 1935 at the age of 71. His body was cremated and was interred three days later, on 18 August, at the Père Lachaise Cemetery.