“Avignon. Evening (the Papal Palace)”
“Avignon. Evening (the Papal Palace)” is a bright and colorful oil on canvas painting by the French Neo-Impressionism artist, Paul Signac, from 1909. Along with Georges Seurat, Signac is known for his employ of the Pointillism art style.
Signac was also a founding member of the Société des Artistes Indépendants which provided avante-garde artists with a space to develop their ideas. The Société des Artistes Indépendants helped pave the way for Modern art styles such as Fauvism and Cubism.
“Avignon. Evening (the Papal Palace)” is one of Signac’s most well-known pieces and is a beautiful example of pointillism. It depicts the Palais des Papes, a large and important Gothic palace and fortress located in Avignon in southern France. This city was the seat of the Roman Catholic church between 1309 and 1377 and was where seven Catholic Popes lived.
In this painting, Signac used individual points of color, unblended, right onto the canvas. Up close, as with Impressionism, the canvas looks to be covered with little, tiny points of purples, oranges, and greens. As the viewer backs up, the scene of the palace, water, and bridge emerge against a backdrop of colorful clouds. Even the reflection of the building is evident.
The Pointillism theory worked on the idea that the eye of the viewer would blend the colors upon looking at the entire piece. Signac was taken with the pointillism method. He abandoned the longer brush strokes used by the impressionists for the small, unblended dots of pointillism.
“Avignon. Evening (the Papal Palace)” is currently on display at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, France.
For more on Paul Signac, please visit his short biography here.
You can find more artists to learn about here.
