A. Dubois-Pillet 1846-1890

A. Dubois-Pillet 1846-1890

A close friend of Georges Seurat despite an age difference of 14 years, Dubois-Pillet was one of the earliest practitioners of pointillisme. Dubois-Pillet had made his early career in the army before being transferred to the gendarmie. He took painting up as a hobby and was found to be talented enough to exhibit at the Salons of 1877 and 1879. He moved to Paris the following year and soon came into contact with a group of young artists who had been exhibiting together since 1874 and were already being described as impressionists. Their influence transformed his work; it also insured that his submissions were refused at the Salons of 1880 and 1884. While he never exhibited with the impressionists, his friendship with Seurat, Angrand and Signac and his visits to the café La nouvelle Athénes (where the most radical artists were habitués) led to his embrace of the ‘neo-impressionist’ style they invented. He adopted a pointillist technique that was more instinctive than the scientific approach of Seurat, as he perceived this style merely as a means of achieving a novel way to portray the effects of light rather than a means of demonstrating radical colorist theories.

Dubois Pillet typically eschews the precise and mathematical precision of the pointillisme of Seurat and Signac for a more painterly expression—his dots of paint are not always even and in none of his neo-impressionist works does he attempt to follow precisely Seurat’s rules for complementary color. As an amateur he could afford to experiment and his work was considerably in advance of its time. Unfortunately he was dogged by poor health and died at the age of forty-four in 1890, just one year before his friend and inspiration, Seurat.

Museum Collections Include:
Musee Crozatier, Le Puy-en-Velay; Ann Arbor Museum of Art, MI; Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.; Indianapolis Museum of Art, IN; Musee d’Orsay, Paris