Paul Signac, not yet twenty-one, helps found the Salon des Artistes Indépendants, an association “with neither jury nor prizes,” in 1884.

Here, he meets Seurat, whom he initiates into the broken-color technique of Impressionism.

Other founding members of the Société des Artistes Indépendants, which will accept the work of any artist who wishes to participate in its annual Salon, include Camille Pissarro, Henri-Edmond Cross, Albert Dubois-Pillet, Maximilien Luce, and Théo Van Rysselberghe.

The group's first show, held in the pavilion of the city of Paris, includes paintings by Odilon Redon, Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Vincent van Gogh, Cross, Seurat, and Signac.

Signac had given up the study of architecture for painting when he was eighteen, and, through Armand Guillaumin, had became a convert to the coloristic principles of Impressionism.