Biographie
1846–1890
Being a professional Army officer, Albert Dubois-Pillet was an auto-didact and talented member of a new generation of painters inspired by Impressionism. These newcomers developed their own technique and style during the decade 1870–1880. As a co-founder of the ‘Société des Indépendants’, Dubois-Pillet exhibited at the 1884 ‘Salon des Indépendants’ alongside Georges Seurat, Paul Signac, Henri-Edmond Cross, Odilon Redon and Louis Valtat.
As a friend of the leading figures of Neo-Impressionism, Paul Signac and Georges Seurat, Dubois-Pillet became a stylistic representative of Pointillism. Otherwise known as Divisionism, this style was rooted in the scientific colour theories of Michel-Eugène Chevreul, the notable French chemist who presented the world with his revolutionary chromatic diagram in 1861 and in the findings of O.N. Rood, American professor of physics who developed the science of colour perception. In 1887, Dubois-Pillet discovered the work of the 18th Century British polymath Thomas Young, who revealed that the eye had three colour receptors to perceive the three primary colours. Dubois-Pillet executed this triad colour theory by applying a primary colour in between hues of colour.
In 1889, Dubois-Pillet left Paris when the army transferred him to Puy-en-Velay, in rural Auvergne. Here he fell victim to smallpox and passed away in 1890.