Piene-Tree at Saint-Tropez

In the 1880s, a new trend appeared in painting, known as neo-impressionism. Its followers used a scientific method with a strict system of paint application, which countered impressionists, who were striving to capture and express the variability of nature, relying on their own impressions. Neo-impressionists used paints of pure tones, applying them in separate point- or square-like brush strokes. This technique gave neo-impressionism other names: pointillism (from the French word “point”) or divisionism (from the French word “diviser,” meaning “to divide”). At the same time, artists based their work on contemporary physical science, particularly on the effect of simultaneous contrast. Their own theoretical research, described in the book “From Eugène Delacroix to Neo-Impressionism” by Paul Signac, had a very significant meaning for them. In the center of the painting Pine Tree at Saint-Tropez, Signac depicted a wide-branching tree that fills almost the entire canvas. The movement of branches spreading out in front of the blue sky somewhat conquers the surroundings. Instead of identical point-like brush strokes, Signac makes the painting texture more complex by giving it various shapes and directions: the strokes trail on the ground or stretch out to convey the flexibility of branches. The color scheme also changes: instead of pastel hues, which are typical for Signac’s early works, reverberant contrasts of navy, blue, yellow, violet, lilac, and red appear. They are precisely combined in accordance with the chromatic scale and rules of harmonized color scheme formation. Signac considered painting en plein air “a kind of slavery,” so he preferred to work on landscapes in his studio.