Neoimpressionism: What It Is And What Are Its Characteristics
At times, the story seems meticulously calculated. And George Seurat exhibited his Sunday afternoon on the island of Grande Jatte, considered the great work of Neo-Impressionism, in the last of the Impressionists’ exhibitions. Impressionism was dead, and a new era of artistic expression began.
The year was 1886, and Seurat’s painting caused a real sensation. Not because of its theme; The public was more than accustomed, thanks to Monet and company, to urban and rural landscapes flooded with light. But its colossal dimensions (207.6 x 308 cm) and, above all, the novel technique, established a turning point between this great work by Seurat and the previous impressionist production.
A new style was inaugurated, neo-impressionism But what did she consist of? What were its characteristics? Why did it represent a revolution in impressionist technique? In this article we are going to find out.
The term “neo-impressionism”, as well as “post-impressionism”, is a somewhat vague reference to the artistic production that developed in Europe after the rise of impressionism. In the 1880s, the Impressionists were experiencing a crisis that, in reality, represented their swan song. After the group dispersed, new artists appeared who gave a new twist to what Impressionism had proposed a decade earlier.
It was the art critic Félix Féneon (1861-1944), very close to impressionist circles, who coined the term It all happened in 1886; precisely, regarding the last exhibition of the movement, in which we have commented that George Seurat (1859-1891) participated with his Sunday afternoon.
Féneon had written a volume on impressionist painting and knew the group’s technique and creative process quite well. Therefore, when he found himself in front of Seurat’s canvas, he was amazed at the technical innovation that he represented with respect to his predecessors.
What was this innovation that had placed Seurat at the forefront of Parisian cultural life? In reality, your Sunday afternoon It had not been the first work of a clearly “neo-impressionist” nature that the artist had shown to the public. His canvas Bathers at Asnières, showing another perspective of the island of Grande Jatte, had been submitted to the official Salon in 1884 and was immediately rejected. The work was exhibited in the famous Salón de los Independientes, where artists not accepted by “official” art exhibited. It was there that she was discovered by Paul Signac (1863-1935), Seurat’s most fervent follower and his faithful friend.
Both in Bathers in Asnières and in Sunday afternoon It is clearly seen what it was that Féneon had noticed and had decided to name this new style “neo-impressionism”. This innovation was the technique that Seurat had used Because, while the Impressionists made quick, loose brushstrokes and, above all, mixed the colors on the canvas, the tones of Seurat’s paintings remained “intact” on the canvas.
Already at the beginning of the 19th century, the chemist Michel Eugène Chevreul (1786-1889) had launched his “law of simultaneous contrast of colors”, in which he maintained, among other things, that two colors appeared much more different if they were juxtaposed. What Chevreul was saying was that the human eye had the ability to “interpret” colors.
Starting from this theory, and also based on the research on color by Ogden N. Rood (1831-1902), Seurat developed a painting technique based on pure chromatic dots applied evenly on the canvas The colors were simply juxtaposed on the fabric; At the proper distance, the viewer’s retina mixed them through an optical illusion. This factor makes Seurat and his followers much more “analytical” artists than his predecessors. Neo-impressionist canvases lack the spontaneity that impressionist creations enjoy, since they take their positivism to the extreme. In Neo-Impressionism everything is carefully studied, and the optical and scientific theories that acquired so much resonance at the time are taken advantage of.
George Seurat, the great name of neo-impressionism
At Seurat, this thoroughness reaches the extreme. The painter was enormously meticulous when it came to composing his paintings, as demonstrated by the 28 drawings and 28 oil sketches that he made for his Sunday afternoon, not counting the three canvases he previously executed to frame the scene. During the long months he dedicated to his masterpiece, Seurat changed the composition and characters several times. Paul Signac, his follower and great friend, commented that, when he visited the painter in his studio, the canvas seemed too large for the smallness of the workplace. Some scholars point to this as the reason why the figures of Sunday afternoon appear somewhat disproportionate.
The motif of the inaugural work of Neo-Impressionism was ordinary; Some people (most of them elegant and distinguished) enjoy a Sunday afternoon on Grande Jatte, a small island in the Seine. The technique of uniform dots (which was later called divisionism or pointillism) guarantees that, at an appropriate distance, a harmonious combination of colors can be seen However, if we get closer, we can see that, indeed, Seurat applies juxtaposed points of pure color, without mixing.
The empire of Neo-Impressionism lasted until the untimely death of Seurat, who died of meningitis at the age of 31. His friend Signac was in charge of developing his theories and spreading the style. Especially important for the trajectory of Pointillism was his work From Eugène Delacroix to Neo-Impressionism, published in 1899 and which laid the technical foundations of the movement.
Influence of neo-impressionism on artists at the turn of the century
Signac’s works faithfully follow the precepts of his friend, although in some of them we already observe a kind of pre-Fauvism. We cannot forget the enormous influence that Seurat’s work had on artists fauves, who picked up the idea of “pure color” and began to apply colors directly to the fabric without any prior mixing. Thus, the Fauves Henri Matisse (1869-1954) or André Dérain (1880-1954) received a great learning from the pictorial heritage that Seurat had left.
Paul Signac evolved in his final stage towards a very decorative work, inspired by Japanese posters and prints. A clear example of this is his famous Portrait of Félix Féneon on the enamel of a rhythmic background of measurements and angles, tones and colorswhere the art critic who had given the style its name appears as a conjurer framed in a background of undulating, almost dreamlike colors.
Paints will never again reflect the real color of the world At the end of the century, artists such as Paul Gauguin (1848-1903), Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) or Paul Cézanne (1839-1906), the great names of what has been called post-impressionism, captured tones as an expressive vehicle, a phenomenon that They will take the aforementioned fauves to the limit in 1905.
The other neo-impressionist artists
Although Seurat and Signac are the best-known names of Neo-Impressionism (not in vain, they were the ones who developed the technique) There are other artists who followed the precepts of this new style, such as Henri-Edmond Cross (1856-1910) Cross’s real name was Delacroix, but he changed his surname to distance himself from his romantic namesake and prevent the public from confusing them. His immersion in pointillism seuratian It was late, since his first pointillist works date from 1891, precisely the year of Seurat’s death.
On the other hand, Neo-Impressionism had a deep impact in Belgium and Holland. Seurat was called by the group of Les Vingt (The Twenty), based in Brussels, to exhibit jointly. Previously, the group of Belgian artists had shown interest in impressionists such as Pissarro, Monet and Berthe Morissot, who were also invited to exhibit with them. Some of the Belgian and Dutch names of Neo-Impressionism are the painters AW Finch (1854-1930) and Henry van Velde (1863-1957).
