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Lot Essay
With its kaleidoscopic colour, L’Arc-en-ciel (Venise) is a resplendent depiction of Venice’s Grand Canal. Taking as its subject one of Paul Signac’s most favoured motifs – a maritime scene – the present work depicts the magisterial view of the Church of San Giorgio Maggiore as seen across the canal from the Piazza San Marco. An enthusiastic yachtsman, Signac would have relished the calm waters and mix of boats that filled this view, and he lavishly doted upon each of these elements. Painted in 1905, the present work dates from a triumphant moment in Signac’s career during which his reputation as a maître de la couleur was cemented internationally, a title worthy of an artist whose paintings were luminous.
Signac travelled to Venice in 1904, a year after he initially planned his voyage. He cancelled this first trip after learning that his friend Henri-Edmond Cross was already there; Signac worried that the artists’ compositions would be too similar to exhibit. The shared desire to visit Venice stemmed from an interest in John Ruskin’s writings, particularly Elements of Drawing, which Cross had translated. It wasn’t until March of the following year that Signac finally arrived in La Serenissima. He planned to lodge at the Casa Petrarca, a location Cross approved of: ‘You are superbly well placed to enjoy the endlessly changing skies and waters which, for the imagination of a colourist like you, will inspire precious harmonies’ (quoted in ‘Ports and Travels: Paul Signac in the Twentieth Century’, in M. Ferretti-Bocquillon, ed., Signac: 1863-1935, exh. cat., Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, Paris, p. 233).
In Venice, Signac passed his time visiting museums and churches: he was particularly excited by the Tintorettos at the Scuola di San Rocco, writing that the building was ‘one of those marvels that…gives you an artistic frisson that you might feel four or five times in a very full career’ (quoted in M. Ferretti-Bocquillon, Signac: Reflections on Water, exh. cat., Fondation de l’Hermitage, Lausanne, 2016, p. 24). He also made dozens of watercolours – more than 200 in total – that capture the play of light on the water, the ripples in the canal, and the decadence of the city’s architecture. Once back in his studio in France, Signac then worked to translate these informal sketches into oil paintings; L’Arc-en-ciel would have been painted in 1905 in Saint-Tropez.
L’Arc-en-ciel was created as part of Signac’s port series, a cycle of work that was inspired by the eighteenth century French painter Claude-Joseph Vernet. While Vernet focused on France alone, Signac cast his eye further afield, painting the ports of Venice, Rotterdam, and Constantinople as well as those of Marseilles, La Rochelle, and Saint-Tropez. Using individual daubs of pigment, Signac would describe the harbours he encountered. The present work is composed of vivid hues: royal purple, flaming red, and lemon yellow that make up the manmade structures, the shimmering green water, and sapphire blue sky above pierced by a dazzling rainbow. The use of pure colour underscores Signac’s enduring commitment to the neo-impressionist technique. Along with Georges Seurat, in the mid-1880s, Signac had developed pointillism, a revolutionary style in which the artists applied colour to the canvas with a rigorously implemented methodology. Inspired by colour theories pioneered by Michel Eugène Chevreul and Ogden Rood, Signac and Seurat began to divide colours across their canvases using tiny dabs of paint so that they would combine optically in the eye of their beholder.
In the years following Seurat’s premature death in 1891, Signac’s technique began to loosen. Although still committed to Neo-Impressionism, his brushwork became thicker and more angular, giving his compositions a mosaic quality. Such varied touches can be seen in L’Arc-en-ciel, whose colours tesselate across the canvas. As Cross wrote to Théo van Rysselberghe in 1905, the year L’Arc-en-ciel was painted, ‘I always experience a very painterly emotion in front of Signac’s canvases; I like to look at them close up as much as from far away. There’s a play of hues in them as ravishing as happy combinations of gems, and it is his alone’ (quoted in ibid., p. 20). For Signac, a colourist par excellence, compositional harmony as achieved through colour came to supersede the dogmatic scientific approach to which he had previously ascribed.
Even as vivid hues electrify L’Arc-en-ciel, the port scene was carefully structured. The viewer’s eye is directed between the mooring gondolas and their balletic gondoliers towards the church’s campanile and then finally along the rainbow’s curve. The balanced composition, combined with its classical subject matter, are further proof that Signac was the heir apparent to maritime masters Claude Lorrain and J.M.W. Turner. Though he consciously studied his predecessors, Signac’s chromatic innovations made him one of the most successful and influential artists of the early-twentieth century. A staunch proponent of Neo-Impressionism up until his death in 1935, Signac remained a prominent figure in the art world for the duration of his life. As John Leighton observed, ‘If [Signac’s] earlier Neo-Impressionism was an art of renunciation and restraint, his mature style is rich, luxuriant, and sensual… Freed from the burden of description, colour takes on its own exuberant life’ (‘Out of Seurat’s Shadow: Signac, 1863-1935, an introduction’, in exh. cat., op. cit., 2001, p. 19).
L’Arc-en-ciel (Venise) was previously owned by Alexandre Louis Philippe Marie Berthier, 4th Prince of Wagram, whose collection was renowned. Initially drawn to the Barbizon School, Berthier’s interests quickly shifted towards Modernism, with the acquisition of paintings by Gustave Courbet, Edouard Manet, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro, Paul Gauguin, and Edgar Degas, among others. During his lifetime, Berthier had the reputation of being a discerning collector of modern art, and paintings previously held in Berthier’s collection are now preserved in museums worldwide including the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Kunstmuseum Basel, State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, and the Musée d'Orsay, Paris.
Signac travelled to Venice in 1904, a year after he initially planned his voyage. He cancelled this first trip after learning that his friend Henri-Edmond Cross was already there; Signac worried that the artists’ compositions would be too similar to exhibit. The shared desire to visit Venice stemmed from an interest in John Ruskin’s writings, particularly Elements of Drawing, which Cross had translated. It wasn’t until March of the following year that Signac finally arrived in La Serenissima. He planned to lodge at the Casa Petrarca, a location Cross approved of: ‘You are superbly well placed to enjoy the endlessly changing skies and waters which, for the imagination of a colourist like you, will inspire precious harmonies’ (quoted in ‘Ports and Travels: Paul Signac in the Twentieth Century’, in M. Ferretti-Bocquillon, ed., Signac: 1863-1935, exh. cat., Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, Paris, p. 233).
In Venice, Signac passed his time visiting museums and churches: he was particularly excited by the Tintorettos at the Scuola di San Rocco, writing that the building was ‘one of those marvels that…gives you an artistic frisson that you might feel four or five times in a very full career’ (quoted in M. Ferretti-Bocquillon, Signac: Reflections on Water, exh. cat., Fondation de l’Hermitage, Lausanne, 2016, p. 24). He also made dozens of watercolours – more than 200 in total – that capture the play of light on the water, the ripples in the canal, and the decadence of the city’s architecture. Once back in his studio in France, Signac then worked to translate these informal sketches into oil paintings; L’Arc-en-ciel would have been painted in 1905 in Saint-Tropez.
L’Arc-en-ciel was created as part of Signac’s port series, a cycle of work that was inspired by the eighteenth century French painter Claude-Joseph Vernet. While Vernet focused on France alone, Signac cast his eye further afield, painting the ports of Venice, Rotterdam, and Constantinople as well as those of Marseilles, La Rochelle, and Saint-Tropez. Using individual daubs of pigment, Signac would describe the harbours he encountered. The present work is composed of vivid hues: royal purple, flaming red, and lemon yellow that make up the manmade structures, the shimmering green water, and sapphire blue sky above pierced by a dazzling rainbow. The use of pure colour underscores Signac’s enduring commitment to the neo-impressionist technique. Along with Georges Seurat, in the mid-1880s, Signac had developed pointillism, a revolutionary style in which the artists applied colour to the canvas with a rigorously implemented methodology. Inspired by colour theories pioneered by Michel Eugène Chevreul and Ogden Rood, Signac and Seurat began to divide colours across their canvases using tiny dabs of paint so that they would combine optically in the eye of their beholder.
In the years following Seurat’s premature death in 1891, Signac’s technique began to loosen. Although still committed to Neo-Impressionism, his brushwork became thicker and more angular, giving his compositions a mosaic quality. Such varied touches can be seen in L’Arc-en-ciel, whose colours tesselate across the canvas. As Cross wrote to Théo van Rysselberghe in 1905, the year L’Arc-en-ciel was painted, ‘I always experience a very painterly emotion in front of Signac’s canvases; I like to look at them close up as much as from far away. There’s a play of hues in them as ravishing as happy combinations of gems, and it is his alone’ (quoted in ibid., p. 20). For Signac, a colourist par excellence, compositional harmony as achieved through colour came to supersede the dogmatic scientific approach to which he had previously ascribed.
Even as vivid hues electrify L’Arc-en-ciel, the port scene was carefully structured. The viewer’s eye is directed between the mooring gondolas and their balletic gondoliers towards the church’s campanile and then finally along the rainbow’s curve. The balanced composition, combined with its classical subject matter, are further proof that Signac was the heir apparent to maritime masters Claude Lorrain and J.M.W. Turner. Though he consciously studied his predecessors, Signac’s chromatic innovations made him one of the most successful and influential artists of the early-twentieth century. A staunch proponent of Neo-Impressionism up until his death in 1935, Signac remained a prominent figure in the art world for the duration of his life. As John Leighton observed, ‘If [Signac’s] earlier Neo-Impressionism was an art of renunciation and restraint, his mature style is rich, luxuriant, and sensual… Freed from the burden of description, colour takes on its own exuberant life’ (‘Out of Seurat’s Shadow: Signac, 1863-1935, an introduction’, in exh. cat., op. cit., 2001, p. 19).
L’Arc-en-ciel (Venise) was previously owned by Alexandre Louis Philippe Marie Berthier, 4th Prince of Wagram, whose collection was renowned. Initially drawn to the Barbizon School, Berthier’s interests quickly shifted towards Modernism, with the acquisition of paintings by Gustave Courbet, Edouard Manet, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro, Paul Gauguin, and Edgar Degas, among others. During his lifetime, Berthier had the reputation of being a discerning collector of modern art, and paintings previously held in Berthier’s collection are now preserved in museums worldwide including the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Kunstmuseum Basel, State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, and the Musée d'Orsay, Paris.