Dot Dot Dot

each other in a circular system, and producing scales of thousands of tints.) It is said that it was Seurat’s orchestration of tones and colors that allowed viewers to be moved, a lesson that Dubois-Pillet took close to his heart as he searched for balance in coloration and luminosity. • • • Many art historians have recognized the Pointillist technique as a way to create distance from thematic matters. But, as our images here show, it is really not only about this perceived distancing, but about the greatest degrees of luminosity and brilliance that tiny dots of varying pure color, which become blended in the viewer’s eye, can achieve. The watercolor Landscape with Sea and Cliffs , c. 1900 (cat. no. 5 ) by Hippolyte Petitjean ( 1854 – 1929 ) is the best example of the longevity of this striving, nine years after Seurat’s death. Petitjean never abandoned Pointillism as a method of artistic expression, and continued to exhibit his work regularly at the Salon des Indépendants until the very end of his career. • • • Many later artists, such as Camille Pissarro ( 1830 – 1903 ), Vincent Van Gogh ( 1853 – 1890 ) and Paul Signac ( 1863 – 1935 ), used Pointillist techniques briefly, often allowing the dots of color to be broader and brighter in color. This combination of optical studies and luminosity is even more beautifully embodied in Henri Matisse’s and Pierre Bonnard’s oeuvres. Bonnard himself went beyond both Impressionist and Pointillist analytical vocabularies, bringing in more unique constellations of colors in order to channel mood and emotion. We interpret here his spectacular Vue Panoramic de Cannet , c. 1930 (cat. no. 6 ) as the result of these explorations, showing the exuberant joy in finding compositional structures within his unique color palette.