There were also many overlaps between Symbolism and Neo-Impressionism, with a mutual interest in symbolic and expressive content. Seurat and Signac attracted a large number of followers in the following years, including Charles Angrand, Henri Edmond Cross, Albert Dubois-Pillet and Leo Gausson. Signac wrote, ‘The Neo-Impressionist does not dot, he divides.’ Neo-Impressionism and Symbolism The term Divisionism was applied to their theories and Pointillism to the technique of applying ‘dots’ of colour.
The Impressionists had already begun exploring the impact of unmixed areas of colour on canvas, which Seurat and Signac developed further, applying small areas of complimentary colours together in a dizzying haze of dots and dashes, demonstrated in Seurat’s La Luzerne, Saint-Denis, 1884-5 and his Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, 1886. Of particular interest was Chevreul’s ‘principles of simultaneous contrasts’ when the eye sees a colour, it automatically produces an after-image of its complimentary hue, and that complimentary colours placed next to each other will ‘blend’ in the eye. Scientific texts they studied included Students’ Text-book of Colour: or, Modern Chromatics, with Applications to Art and Industry 1881, by American physicist Ogden Rood and more prominently, Principle of Harmony and Contrast of Colours and Their Application to the Arts, 1839, by Michel Eugene Chevreul. Signac was greatly impressed with Seurat’s paintings and in 1884 the two joined forces, developing mutual interests in colour theory and optics. The final work was produced in his studio, not in the typical Impressionist manner of en plein air.
#Neo impressionism series
The young Parisian artist’s methods were far from fleeting he made over fourteen sketches in oil as studies for the painting, along with a series of charcoal drawings that explored form and light, including Seated Nude, Study for Une Baignade, 1883 and A Study for Une Baignade, 1883. With its urban leisure subject matter and glowing luminosity the painting makes a nod to several Impressionists, yet it is executed with a much greater sense of solidity and form. Seurat is often celebrated as the most daring of the Neo-Impressionists, who came to prominence with his iconic Une Baignade, Asnieres, ( The Bathers at Asnieres), 1884. Critic Paul Adam wrote, ‘this exhibition initiates (us) into a new art’, and Felix Feneon first coined the term Neo-Impressionism (New Impressionism) to describe their style. The newer work was hung separately from paintings by the other Impressionists, comparing old and new versions of the same style, which was largely met with positivity. In 1886 French Impressionist Camille Pissarro suggested paintings in a newer style should be included in the last Impressionist exhibition, by his son Lucien, along with Georges Seurat and Paul Signac.
By the 1880s the tide had begun to turn against Impressionism, which many artists now felt was too fleeting and ephemeral.
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