The Milliners, 1885/86
Oil on canvas, 116 x 89 cm
Signed & dated lower right: P. Signac 85
Cachin 111

The twenty-one-year-old Paul Signac made his first public appearance in 1884 at the first exhibition of the Indépendants with four landscapes in the manner of Monet and Guillaumin, but there he was confronted by Seurat?s "Bathers", which opened his eyes to the development of "romantic" Impressionism into a "scientific" Impressionism by way of new optical knowledge – especially on the basis of the research of Eugène Chevreul. The "Grande-Jatte", which he saw being created in Seurat?s studio, was a further revelation. Signac recognized the possibility of achieving a maximum of colour effect and brilliance by consistent restriction of the palette to the colours of the spectrum, excluding all earthy shades, which Seurat had still employed. "The Modistes", which Signac showed with Seurat?s "Grande-Jatte" at the last Impressionist exhibition of 1886, is the programmatic picture of the transformation in style. It is more than obvious that Seurat is the model: the large dimensions, the sudden interest in the figure, at which he is not very successful, the solemn frontality, which, owing to his youthful will to produce something important, leads to strained rigidity, and finally the analysis of the colours into spots, which is most convincing in the background figure and in the abstract parts of the picture, such as the entrancing bluish-pink wallpaper and the floorboards.