1863-1935 French Paul Signac Galleries Paul Victor Jules Signac was born in Paris on November 11, 1863. He followed a course of training in architecture before deciding at the age of 18 to pursue a career as a painter. He sailed around the coasts of Europe, painting the landscapes he encountered. He also painted scenes of cities in France in his later years. 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 became Seurat's faithful supporter. Under his 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. Many of Signac's paintings are of the French coast. 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. In March 1889, he visited Vincent van Gogh at Arles. The next year he made a short trip to Italy, seeing Genoa, Florence, and Naples. The Port of Saint-Tropez, oil on canvas, 1901Signac loved sailing and began to travel in 1892, sailing a small boat to almost all the ports of France, to Holland, and around the Mediterranean as far as Constantinople, basing his boat at St. Tropez, which he "discovered". From his various ports of call, Signac brought back vibrant, colourful watercolors, sketched rapidly from nature. From these sketches, he painted large studio canvases that are carefully worked out in small, mosaic-like squares of color, quite different from the tiny, variegated dots previously used by Seurat. Signac himself 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 Andr?? Derain in particular, thus playing a decisive role in the evolution of Fauvism. As president of the Societe des Artistes Ind??pendants from 1908 until his death, Signac encouraged younger artists (he was the first to buy a painting by Matisse) by exhibiting the controversial works of the Fauves and the Cubists.  Related Paintings of Paul Signac :. | Women at the Well | Town | Herblay, La River | Riverbank,Petie Andely | ligbtbouse |
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Thomas Phillips
(18 October 1770 - 20 April 1845) was a leading English portrait and subject painter. He painted many of the great men of the day including scientists, artists, writers, poets and explorers. Phillips was born at Dudley then in Worcestershire. Having acquired the art of glass-painting in Birmingham under Francis Eginton,[1] he visited London in 1790 with an introduction to Benjamin West, who found him employment on the painted-glass windows of St George's Chapel at Windsor. In 1791, he became a student of the Royal Academy, and exhibited there, in 1792, a view of Windsor Castle, followed in the next two years by the "Death of Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, at the Battle of Castillon," "Ruth and Naomi," "Elijah restoring the Widow's Son," "Cupid disarmed by Euphrosyne," and other pictures. After 1796, he mainly confined himself to portrait-painting. However, the field was very crowded with the likes of John Hoppner, William Owen, Thomas Lawrence and Martin Archer Shee competing for business; consequently, from 1796 to 1800, his exhibited works were chiefly portraits of gentlemen and ladies, often nameless in the catalogue and of no great importance historically-speaking.
Alson Skinner Clark
1876-1949
CASTILLO, Antonio del
b. 1616, Cordoba, d. 1668, Cordoba Spanish painter and draughtsman. He studied first with his father, Agust?n del Castillo (d July 1631), a painter also known for his drawings, and in November 1631 began a three-year apprenticeship with Ignacio de Aedo Calderen, a painter of religious figures ( pintor de imaginera). From 1635 to 1638 Castillo was also known as painter and pintor de imaginera, and by December 1638