Charles Théophile Angrand

A French Neo-impressionist, an outstanding graphic artist, who was a member of the group of pointillists headed by Georges Seurat, the author of an artistic method called pointillism and divisionism.

He was born into the family of a rural schoolteacher and was the third and the youngest child. He received his primary education at the Academy of Arts in Rouen.

Angrand was a notable figure of the French avant-garde of the end of the nineteenth century and was directly involved in the organization of the Salon of Independent, where he often exhibited his paintings. The artist adhered to anarchist political views, like many other Neo-impressionists of that time. Angrand is known as a talented graphic artist; he performed many of his works in a black and white palette achieving incredible light effects.

Key Ideas:

– Bold contrasts and expressive compositions with an accent at the very center of the picture are characteristic of the paintings of Charles Angrand. Most of them are made in the style of pointillism (divisionism).

– Starting his Neo-impressionistic creativity with copying the technique of Seurat, the artist very quickly developed his own inimitable painting style. The most famous painting by Charles Angrand is the pointillistic canvas “Walking Couple”, now stored in the Museum d’Orsay in Paris.
– Over time, Angrand developed his own unique method of separating fairly large and geometric smears, leading to a coarser optical blending compared to small dots. This is how he achieved more expression in the canvases, and compensated some “large-pixel” for using more intense colors.

– In the second half of his creative path, Angrand almost completely abandoned oil painting and was carried away by drawing. His graphic works are executed in a monochrome color scale; they impress with a kind of play of light and shadow, mysterious shine of depicted objects and the depth of images. The artist often used only black and white colors, but reached an unprecedented expressiveness.