The term Neo-Impressionism refers to a pictorial technique where color pigments are no longer mixed either on the palette or directly on canvas, but instead placed as small dots side by side. Mixing of colors takes place from a suitable distance, in the observor's eye, as an "optical mixture".

In the early 1880s, French painter Georges Seurat studied writings on color theory by French chemists Eugène Chevreul (1786-1889), Charles Henry, and American physicist Ogden Rood, and invented a new painting technique that he named "separation of color" or "Divisionism", the main advantage of which is to give a greater vibrancy of color.

Seurat's first large painting (206x305cm) "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte" - 1884-1886 may be considered as the founding masterpiece of Divisionism.

Looking at Seurat's Divisionism in this context, it appears at its beginnings to be only a pictorial variation of Impressionism, which Pissarro will call "a scientific Impressionism". Technics changes, but subjects and realism remain impressionist.

Seurat died at the age of only 32, leaving a major individual work.

Signac later renamed Divisionism as "Pointillism", but as soon as 1886, writer and art critics Félix Fénéon, who will become Divisionism greatest defender, call it "Neo-Impressionism".

From the beginning Camille Pissarro was seduced by Seurat's Divisionism, and from 1886 to 1891 painted in a pointillist manner, although preferring small strokes to dots, before he finally went back to a more Impressionist technique, as he felt he was imprisoned in a too impersonal painting.

He later wrote in 1896 concerning the systematic division of color : "I find it impossible to follow my sensations, to give life and movement... Very likely I was not made for this art which gives me the feeling of death levelling". Nevertheless, Pissarro's technique will keep from this pointillist period a trend for small color strokes.

Van Gogh, as he arrived in Paris in 1886, also took a great interest in Seurat's theories and painted several works in a pointillist manner.

From 1895 on, Signac "illuminates" Neo-Impressionism through works as "La bouée rouge" (The red buoy) -1895, "Saint-Tropez, l'orage" (saint-Tropez, the storm) - 1895, "Voiles et pins" (Sails and pines) - 1896.

It is this new liberated Neo-Impressionism, its brilliant and luminous colors, which will later influence the Fauve painters and the Expressionists, whereas that of Seurat, more rational, will attract attention of Cubist painters due to its "scientific clarity of conception".

Unlike Impressionist painters, Seurat and Signac, wishing to give a scientific and meaningful basis to their painting, will write treatises which will have much influence over the young painters who were to do the art of the XXth century ("From Eugène Delacroix to Neo-Impressionism" - Paul Signac, 1898).

Only very few artists, such as Signac or Cross, will remain faithful to Neo-Impressionism, whereas for many others, e.g. Matisse, Derain, Braque, it will only be a step towards something new.

This is the case when Henri Matisse, after he had met with Signac at Saint-Tropez and Cross at the Lavandou, paints "Luxe, calme et volupté" ("Luxury, Calm and Happiness") - 1905, a work in which their influence appears clarly, in the composition as well as in the use of a divisionist technique .

It is then the beginning of Fauvism, the monotonous and regular division of color touches of Pointillism will extend to many other different forms, and colors will soon take precedence over representation concern.

Modern art in the XXth century will emphasize non-realistic stylisation in painting, to which Neo-Impressionism had opened the way.

Despite this aspect of Neo-Impressionism as an essential contribution to art history, there remain, besides Seurat and Signac, many beautiful works of little known painters.

One can measure the originality and the diversity of these Neo-Impressionist artists, who transformed a difficult technique into art : Dubois-Pillet, Angrand, Cross, Luce, Van Risselberghe, Finch, Lemmen, Toorop...