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Georges Seurat (1859–91), Paul Signac (1863–1935), and Camille Pissaro (1830–1903). These artists developed divisionism and its more formal cousin, pointillism. Rather than mixing yellow and blue together to make green, they applied tiny dots of yellow and blue right next to one another so that the viewer’s eye mixed them together to make green. Seurat’s best work in the Orsay is Le Cirque (1891), though the lines are softer and subjects more compelling in the nude studies called Les Poseuses (1886–87).

Externally, rococo is noticeable only in a greater elegance and delicacy. Rococo tastes didn’t last long, and soon a neoclassical movement was raising structures, such as Paris’s Pantheon (1758), that were even more strictly based on ancient models than the earlier classicist designs had been. Some identifiable features of classicism include: • Highly symmetrical, rectangular structures based on the classical orders • Projecting central sections topped by triangular pediments • Mansard roofs. A defining feature and true French trademark developed by François Mansart (1598–1666) in the early 15th century; a mansard roof has a double slope, the lower longer and Mansard Roof steeper than the upper.

For more information, see chapter 14. PROVENCE One of France’s most fabled regions flanks the Alps and the Italian border along its eastern end, and incorporates a host of sites the rich and famous have long frequented. Premier destinations are Aix-enProvence, associated with Cézanne; Arles, “the soul of Provence,” captured by van Gogh; Avignon, the 14th-century capital of Christendom during the papal schism; and Marseille, a port city established by the Phoenicians (in some ways more North African than French).