The Dining Room, Opus 152 by Paul Signac (Interpretation and Analysis)

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The Dining Room
Source: Google Arts and Culture

The nineteenth century was a time of remarkable expansion and growth in the world of art. It saw the development of many new artistic styles and innovations in regards to color, form, and line. Pointillism—the practice of creating an image through small dots of color—was one such new technique. The highly recognizable technique was developed by French artists Georges Seurat and Paul Signac in the late nineteenth century and has since gained a great deal of popularity. Together, the two artists researched color theory and the science of contrast to determine how to make pictures out of dots of color.

While Signac’s work has subsequently been overshadowed by that of his contemporary Georges Seurat, he created extraordinary paintings using pointillism. The Dining Room is one of his most interesting masterpieces.

It depicts the artist’s mother and grandfather eating breakfast in their dining room with a maid standing at attention. Signac uses the color blue to create the early morning shadows of the breakfast room. These blue shadows also carve out the features of the diners’ stoic faces. It is a nearly perfect domestic scene from a compositional standpoint. The piece is perfectly balanced, with half the table visible to the left and three figures on different levels of the painting to the right.

However, there is a more complex message at work here. According to The Kröller-Müller Museum, which owns the painting, the piece is a “timeless [example of] bourgeoisie [life]. In that sense the painting is also a critical commentary on the self-satisfaction of civic life and the authoritarian capitalism that Signac, who was a confirmed anarchist, and his likeminded friends, rejected.”

Regardless of the underlying message, it is a fine example of the pointillism and an incredibly effective depiction of everyday life. Signac’s use of color is extraordinary, and, to my mind, it is very beautiful and visually interesting.

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