b. Criquetot-sur-Quville, 1854 - d. Rouen, 1926
Charles Angrand, a French painter, studied in Rouen and Paris. He exhibited in the first Salon des Indépendants in 1884, and made his name known after the group exhibition in 1886. During his lifetime, he exhibited not only paintings but also pastels. Angrand adopted Seurat's divisionism, a systematic, scientific method using the technique of pointillism, i.e., application of unmixed pigments juxtaposed in dots. In order to obtain the utmost luminosity and brilliance of color, small dots of unmixed pigments, applied to the canvas blend optically in the spectator's eye. Developing a highly personal approach to divisionism, Angrand began using larger brush-strokes around 1904. The result was similar to that achieved by dots, but the optical blending was less smooth. He tried to compensate for this by greater intensity of color. The pale colors in the work in the Hecht collection are assumed to be due to fading rather than to the artist's choice.