NEO-IMPRESSIONISM

The Neo-Impressionists debuted as an entity in a gallery of the Eighth (and last) Impressionist Exhibition in Paris in 1886, led by Georges Seurat. That same year, Félix Fénéon, an art critic and champion of these artists, coined the term “Neo-Impresionism” in a review. When Seurat died at an early age, Paul Signac took his place as the leader and theorist of the movement. The principal Neo-Impressionists—Henri-Edmond Cross, Maximilien Luce, Seurat, and Signac—were joined for a number of years by the former Impressionist Camille Pissarro as well as other like-minded artists, such as Belgian painter Théo van Rysselberghe, from nearby countries.

These vanguard painters looked to theories of color and perception to create visual effects in Pointillist canvases, among these the optical and chromatic methods developed by scientists— particularly in publications by French chemist Michel-Eugène Chevreul and by American physicist Ogden Rood. This modern, revolutionary painting technique was characterized by the juxtaposition of individual strokes of pigment to evince the appearance of an intense single hue. By thus orchestrating complementary colors and employing mellifluous forms, the Neo-Impressionists rendered formally unified compositions. The representation of light as it impacted color when refracted across water, or filtered through atmospheric conditions, or rippled across a field, was a dominant concern in their works.