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Lot Essay
Les Balises, Saint-Briac is a rare and important example of a Signac 'opus' painting, dating from the high-point of the Pointillist experiment in 1890. It belongs to a group of four seascapes Signac executed in the summer of that year, comparable to Seurat's contemporary series of paintings at Gravelines, and in which Signac consolidates his own idiom of Pointillism. The present work is the only one of the four to remain in private hands: the other three are housed today in public collections or foundations in Boston, Moscow and Zurich.
Although Signac carried out bold experiments in figure paintings and interiors during the late 1880s, it is the landscapes and seascapes that he painted during the summers at this time that the credit for much of his development should go. The four seascapes undertaken in the summer of 1890 - the present work, Saint-Cast (Cachin 205), Saint-Briac. La Garde Guérin (C 207) and Saint-Briac. Le Port Hue (C 208) - represented a summation of his progress, as is reflected by the fact that he exhibited them all to great acclaim as a group under the title La mer, at the Exposition des XX in Brussels in 1891. Alongside these works was another group of four works exhibited under the collective title Le fleuve (C 191, 192, 195, 196), exploring by contrast the properties of rivers, as opposed to those of the sea, as rendered in the Divisionist style.
Signac's experiments with Pointillism had begun several years earlier, on his exposure to the ground-breaking paintings of his friend Seurat, who had begun, in a new and rigorous manner, to apply colour theory to the pictorial representation of the world around us. Signac had immediately grasped the implications and potential of his friend's breakthrough and began developing his own Pointillism. This was a process that involved much experimentation, and it was only in the late 1880s that he had truly reached what he considered a suitably strong yet independent style. This involved a slightly less formal approach to the creation of the paintings than his colleague used. Where Seurat strictly used opposing colours to bring out a new intensity in his works, Signac left much of his own choice of colour to aesthetics and instinct.
As an instinctive painter, Seurat's choices of subject matter, colour and the application of the paints themselves remained highly personal. The surface of Les Balises, Saint-Briac, for instance, is comprised of thousands of glistening brushstrokes, lacking the restricting formality of the dots in Seurat's paintings. Signac therefore managed to retain a certain humanity in his art, and he never espoused the 'scientific' objectivity that Seurat sought. Signac would summarise his use of the Pointillist style only a few years later: 'The division is a complex system of harmony, an aesthetic rather than a technique. The point is but a means' (Signac, D'Eugène Delacroix au néo-impressionnisme, ed. F. Cachin, Paris, 1978, p. 119).
With the early death of Seurat in 1891, Signac was left as the torch-bearer for the movement, a role which suited his gregarious character. However, it was the year before, in 1890, the year that Les Balises. Saint-Briac was painted, that critics had begun to take true note of Signac as an artist, not least his friend Félix Fénéon, who wrote a biography of the artist for Les hommes d'aujourd'hui, referring to him as 'the young glory of Neo-Impressionism' (Fénéon, quoted in Signac 1863-1935, exh. cat., New York, 2001, p. 160).
The seascapes such as Les Balises, Saint-Briac in many ways provided the perfect subject for Signac to explore and exert his mastery of Pointillism. As an extremely keen sailor, he was particularly observant of the moods of the water, often giving his works titles that refer to the winds or tides. Here, he has shown the beacons at Saint-Briac in faultless detail, not allowing the constraints of his Pointillism to intrude on the subject itself. Indeed, the contrasting brushstrokes create an intense shimmering effect that perfectly captures the feeling of a calm sea.
The four paintings that comprised the series La mer in the 1891 exhibition are all marked by an almost complete lack of any human presence within the scenes presented, a marked contrast to the interiors that he had been producing earlier that year. More than any of the others, Les Balises, Saint-Briac presents the viewer with a poignantly deserted beach; there are no boats, and only the most marginalised buildings to the right. Instead, the view is punctuated by the skeletal beacons of the title. These disrupt the intense horizontality of the painting, but only enough to accentuate it. This is a picture of infinity and, like the art of the Romantic movement, it dazzles us with the scale of the world.
The manner in which the beacons sparsely punctuate the horizon in Les Balises, Saint-Briac appear reminiscent of a few scattered notes on a musical score, a comparison that is all the more noteworthy as foreshadows a group of seascapes that Signac would execute at Concarneau the next year. Those works, all of these seascapes but importantly all featuring the presence of boats and sails, were given musical subtitles - for instance Allegro maestoso (C 217), Presto finale (C 219) and Adagio (C 220) - making clear the link he saw between music and the musicality of the world around him. While those works are mostly characterised by the presence of the vessels, Les Balises, Saint-Briac presents us, in its restrained view, with a sombre but dignified score in comparison.
The sense of the twilight of existence is accentuated by the beautiful variations of the pale colours of foreshore and water. Signac has, with virtuoso skill, manipulated the density of the brushstrokes to give a maximum of information, is evidenced particularly towards the water's edge. Signac has created a luminous painting, filled with a pale and evocative light, that he has rendered more intense through the application of his colour theories and Pointillism. But he has not used this technique only to recreate the light effects of the world or to intensify their rendering in oils, but instead to create a sense of the ephemeral. He has captured not only the light, but the sense that it is changing. This is an effect that would have been all the more apparent when the four La mer works were shown together each of them has a horizon painted at almost exactly the same level, and each is almost exactly the same size (Saint-Cast appears to be the exception, and is cited as being a mere centimetre longer in each dimension), meaning that the group as a whole presented a series of variations, each accentuating the light effects of the other.
Although Signac carried out bold experiments in figure paintings and interiors during the late 1880s, it is the landscapes and seascapes that he painted during the summers at this time that the credit for much of his development should go. The four seascapes undertaken in the summer of 1890 - the present work, Saint-Cast (Cachin 205), Saint-Briac. La Garde Guérin (C 207) and Saint-Briac. Le Port Hue (C 208) - represented a summation of his progress, as is reflected by the fact that he exhibited them all to great acclaim as a group under the title La mer, at the Exposition des XX in Brussels in 1891. Alongside these works was another group of four works exhibited under the collective title Le fleuve (C 191, 192, 195, 196), exploring by contrast the properties of rivers, as opposed to those of the sea, as rendered in the Divisionist style.
Signac's experiments with Pointillism had begun several years earlier, on his exposure to the ground-breaking paintings of his friend Seurat, who had begun, in a new and rigorous manner, to apply colour theory to the pictorial representation of the world around us. Signac had immediately grasped the implications and potential of his friend's breakthrough and began developing his own Pointillism. This was a process that involved much experimentation, and it was only in the late 1880s that he had truly reached what he considered a suitably strong yet independent style. This involved a slightly less formal approach to the creation of the paintings than his colleague used. Where Seurat strictly used opposing colours to bring out a new intensity in his works, Signac left much of his own choice of colour to aesthetics and instinct.
As an instinctive painter, Seurat's choices of subject matter, colour and the application of the paints themselves remained highly personal. The surface of Les Balises, Saint-Briac, for instance, is comprised of thousands of glistening brushstrokes, lacking the restricting formality of the dots in Seurat's paintings. Signac therefore managed to retain a certain humanity in his art, and he never espoused the 'scientific' objectivity that Seurat sought. Signac would summarise his use of the Pointillist style only a few years later: 'The division is a complex system of harmony, an aesthetic rather than a technique. The point is but a means' (Signac, D'Eugène Delacroix au néo-impressionnisme, ed. F. Cachin, Paris, 1978, p. 119).
With the early death of Seurat in 1891, Signac was left as the torch-bearer for the movement, a role which suited his gregarious character. However, it was the year before, in 1890, the year that Les Balises. Saint-Briac was painted, that critics had begun to take true note of Signac as an artist, not least his friend Félix Fénéon, who wrote a biography of the artist for Les hommes d'aujourd'hui, referring to him as 'the young glory of Neo-Impressionism' (Fénéon, quoted in Signac 1863-1935, exh. cat., New York, 2001, p. 160).
The seascapes such as Les Balises, Saint-Briac in many ways provided the perfect subject for Signac to explore and exert his mastery of Pointillism. As an extremely keen sailor, he was particularly observant of the moods of the water, often giving his works titles that refer to the winds or tides. Here, he has shown the beacons at Saint-Briac in faultless detail, not allowing the constraints of his Pointillism to intrude on the subject itself. Indeed, the contrasting brushstrokes create an intense shimmering effect that perfectly captures the feeling of a calm sea.
The four paintings that comprised the series La mer in the 1891 exhibition are all marked by an almost complete lack of any human presence within the scenes presented, a marked contrast to the interiors that he had been producing earlier that year. More than any of the others, Les Balises, Saint-Briac presents the viewer with a poignantly deserted beach; there are no boats, and only the most marginalised buildings to the right. Instead, the view is punctuated by the skeletal beacons of the title. These disrupt the intense horizontality of the painting, but only enough to accentuate it. This is a picture of infinity and, like the art of the Romantic movement, it dazzles us with the scale of the world.
The manner in which the beacons sparsely punctuate the horizon in Les Balises, Saint-Briac appear reminiscent of a few scattered notes on a musical score, a comparison that is all the more noteworthy as foreshadows a group of seascapes that Signac would execute at Concarneau the next year. Those works, all of these seascapes but importantly all featuring the presence of boats and sails, were given musical subtitles - for instance Allegro maestoso (C 217), Presto finale (C 219) and Adagio (C 220) - making clear the link he saw between music and the musicality of the world around him. While those works are mostly characterised by the presence of the vessels, Les Balises, Saint-Briac presents us, in its restrained view, with a sombre but dignified score in comparison.
The sense of the twilight of existence is accentuated by the beautiful variations of the pale colours of foreshore and water. Signac has, with virtuoso skill, manipulated the density of the brushstrokes to give a maximum of information, is evidenced particularly towards the water's edge. Signac has created a luminous painting, filled with a pale and evocative light, that he has rendered more intense through the application of his colour theories and Pointillism. But he has not used this technique only to recreate the light effects of the world or to intensify their rendering in oils, but instead to create a sense of the ephemeral. He has captured not only the light, but the sense that it is changing. This is an effect that would have been all the more apparent when the four La mer works were shown together each of them has a horizon painted at almost exactly the same level, and each is almost exactly the same size (Saint-Cast appears to be the exception, and is cited as being a mere centimetre longer in each dimension), meaning that the group as a whole presented a series of variations, each accentuating the light effects of the other.