Neo-impressionism refers to a technique where the painting color pigments are not mixed together on the paint palette or on the canvas. Instead, these pigments were placed side by side as small dots, and only in the observer’s eye the mixing of colors seems to have taken place. It was a very new and original, as well as controversial, style of painting led by Georges Seurat. (I cannot help but think of the mega-pixels in today’s modern digital cameras—a series of dots placed side by side, when viewed as a whole give us a vibrant and detailed picture.)

In the Garden, Camille Pissarro

This avant-garde movement began in France in 1886 and lasted just until 1906 during a transitional period in the history of painting and art. However, Neo-Impressionism in the whole influenced how 20^th century painting evolved.

The Neo-Impressionists renounced Impressionism’s random techniques, preferring instead measured techniques grounded in optics and science. Several writers of the time had published treatises about color theory, and this encouraged the Neo-Impressionist’s belief that their painting style created a more vibrant color in the viewer’s eye than the traditional mixing on the palette could. This ‘optical mixture’ was felt to create shimmers of light on their canvasses. During this time, the separation of color by use of individual strokes of paint pigment became known as Divisionism, and the application of precise dots of paint became named Pointillism.

Georges Seurat was the champion of the movement, opting for the more precise and scientific painting method, rather than the Impressionist’s realism. He and fellow artists Paul Signac and Camille Pissarro preferred the term ‘chroma-luminarism’ which denotes their interest in intensifying both the color and the light in their paintings.

Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, c.1886

Georges Seurat’s first large painting, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, which measured 81 X 120 inches and was completed in 1886, is considered as Divisionism’s founding masterpiece. Neo-Impressionists were first exhibited at the last Impressionist Exhibition in 1886. Camille Pissarro introduced and basically foisted Georges Seurat and Paul Signac, and their ideas about painting, on the likes of Claude Monet and Auguste Renoir. This new style of painting created international buzz very quickly, though it would be short-lived.

The year 1886 was a major turning point in the art world, as it saw not only the birth of Neo-Impressionism, but also the Symbolist movement that questioned the principle of Realism and was championed by Paul Gauguin. Because the Impressionists were finally recognized in France, and also internationally acknowledged and touted as genius because of a successful exhibition in New York City, they no longer felt the need for their annual exhibitions and prolific art creation.