Neo-Impressionism

   Neo-Impressionism was one of the most influential of the French Post Impressionist art movements, first dominating the avant-garde between 1886 and 1891 (the year of its leader the artist George Seurat’s untimely death). Neo-Impressionism was then continued from the later 1890s largely through the art and writing of Paul Signac (whose important manifesto D’Eugene Delacroix au Neo-Impressionsime was published in 1899) and by Henri Edmond-Cross. Many Post Impressionistand future modern artists experimented with Neo-Impressionism and the movement thereby exerted an important influence on many subsequent developments into the twentieth century – including Symbolism and the Fauves (for example through Henri Matisse’s work with Signac in 1904); the Orphists and Cubists (for example through Auguste Herbin, Jean Metzinger and Robert Delaunay’s early explorations of Neo-Impressionism) and the Futurists.

The first Neo-Impressionists were centred around Seurat and Signac after the artists first met in 1884. They were joined in 1885 by Camille Pissarro and Lucien Pissarro and in 1886/7 by Maximilien Luce, Louis Hayet, Albert Dubois-Pillet, Charles Angrand and Leo Gausson. From 1887, Neo-Impressionism became important in Brussels, through Les Vingt, and was chiefly practiced by the artists Theo van Rysselberghe, Willy Finch, Henry van de Velde and from 1890, Georges Lemmen.

The term Neo-Impressionism was coined by the Symbolist critic Felix Feneon in 1886, writing on Seurat’s entry for the 8th and final Impressionist exhibition at the Salon des Independents, which included the celebrated Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grand Jatte, 1884.

Like the Impressionists, the Neo-Impressionist painters were chiefly concerned with capturing the effects of natural light and colour. However, they were above all motivated by an extreme dissatisfaction with Impressionist art, particularly for its focus on the transient, fleeting moment and the way it sought to convey this with what seemed spontaneous, rapid, and even unfinished brush work.

The term Neo-Impressionism was coined by the Symbolist critic Felix Feneon in 1886, writing on Seurat’s entry for the 8th and final Impressionist exhibition at the Salon des Independents, which included the celebrated Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grand Jatte, 1884.

Like the Impressionists, the Neo-Impressionist painters were chiefly concerned with capturing the effects of natural light and colour. However, they were above all motivated by an extreme dissatisfaction with Impressionist art, particularly for its focus on the transient, fleeting moment and the way it sought to convey this with what seemed spontaneous, rapid, and even unfinished brush work.

In seeking a more permanent and enduring painting, the Neo-Impressionists were temporarily linked to the Symbolists. Indeed several of the future Symbolist artists – including Henri Martin and Henri Le Sidaner – adopted a Neo-Impressionist divisionist style to achieve the mystical and luminous effects they sought in their painting. Their close artist friend Ernst Laurent had studied with Seurat at Lehmann’s atelier at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in the late1870s.

The Neo-Impressionists’ ambition was to capture in paint the feel of real light without, as they saw it, the unsatisfactory sketchiness of Impressionist painting. To achieve this, the artists looked to science. Seurat and Pissarro made extensive studies from c.1876 of the colour theories and work into optics and perception of chemist Eugene Chevreul and Charles Blanc and of Ogden Rood (whose important book Modern Chromatics was first published in 1881).

The Neo-Impressionist artists founded their rigorous technical methods from these scientific explorations and were convinced that they alone had found the key to true art. The Neo-Impressionist technique has principally come to be known as Divisionism – so named because the strokes of paint were placed onto the canvas according to a systematic division and combination of colour and hue. This avoided the long-held artistic practice of mixing paint on a palette – leaving the colours to be mixed by the eye (‘melange optique’) - and achieved striking effects of vibrancy and luminosity. Pointillism (originally coined by Feneon) is now widely used in reference to the use of dots or short strokes of paint.

The rigorous technique was matched by an equal discipline in form and composition. However, the rigidity and monotony of Neo-Impressionism eventually proved too inflexible (and even mind numbing) for virtually all the artists and, starting with Luce and Pissarro, they abandoned any strict adherence to a pure divisionist technique.

In the later 1880s, the Neo-Impressionists’ focus shifted to the theories of scientist and aesthetician Charles Henry and his investigations into the physiological and psychological properties of form, line and colour. In this way - through exploring the expressive potential of painting - Neo-Impressionism can also be seen as an important predecessor of Expressionism and many twentieth century artistic developments.