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Hippolyte Petitjean Biography

Hippolyte Petitjean

French

1854-1929

Biography

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Noted Neo-Impressionist/ Pointallist painter, Hippolyte Petitjean was born on September 11, 1854, in Macon, France where he began his art studies at the age of thirteen at the local École de dessin. The town gave him a grant to attend the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris where he studied under Alexandre Cabanel and Pierre Puvis de Chavannes. He exhibited at the Salon beginning in 1880. 
 
By far the most significant event in Petitjean's development was meeting Seurat in 1884. After Seurat encouraged him to join the Neo-Impressionists, where he was also influenced by Paul Signac and Camille Pissarro. He adopted the pointillist technique until 1894 when he started to combine it with more feathery strokes. In 1910, he returned to Neo-Impressionism with a series of decorative watercolours of landscapes and people set off by widely-spaced rounded spots of pure color. Petitjean joined the Neo-Impressionist group in 1886, and in 1887 he showed his first major work in this style. In 1891 he switched from the Salon to exhibit with the Independents. He also exhibited in Brussels in 1893 and 1898, Berlin in 1898, Weimar in 1903, and Wiesbaden in 1921.
 
Though he did some etching, he produced only three lithographs, two of them for the publication Pan in 1898, one color and one black and white
 
Hippolyte Petitjean died on September 18, 1929, in Paris.

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