PETITJEAN, Hippolyte

French painter. He began his studies in drawing in Mâcon before going to Paris c. 1885-86 to join the Neo-Impressionists. He became very close to Seurat, who was generous with his advice and instruction and greatly influenced Petitjean’s conté crayon (a drawing medium composed of compressed powdered graphite or charcoal mixed with a wax or clay base, square in cross-section) drawings.

From 1886 he painted in a Pointillist style. In 1887 he submitted paintings to the Salon in Stockholm and from 1891 was accepted by the Salon des Artistes Indépendants in Paris. In 1893 he was welcomed in Brussels; in 1898 he gained a new German clientele in Berlin, and in 1903 and 1921 his works were hung in Weimar and Wiesbaden.

In 1919 he changed his style and returned to an old-fashioned type of Impressionism.