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Lot Essay
Saint Tropez après l'Orage belongs to a series of views of the harbour designed to capture a similar scene in different light effects. On 8 May 1895 Signac noted in his personal journal exactly what he wanted to achieve in beginning this series. The first picture which he discusses he calls Orage au fond du golf which is the present picture, now titled Saint Tropez après l'Orage:
'I have begun to work again. I have started a painting of 25 Orage au fond du golfe from memory. I wish to achieve a dramatic effect: a harmony of green and violet with a great shaft of yellow light bursting through the clouds. I lack visual reference. I am waiting to see a similar effect again in order to finish it. During the festival I will make some studies, panel paintings and watercolours to paint a port en fête with flags and filled with sunshine. Alongside a port, le matin becalmed, a port, soleil couchant and a port, mistral, this will make a whole series'.
Signac worked on this series throughout the summer of 1895, producing a number of impressive and highly successful oils, including La Bouée rouge, now housed in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, and the very lyrical Saint Tropez, L'orage which was purchased by a young German artist friend of Signac called Yvo Hauptmann who exhibited neo-Impressionist paintings alongside Signac in the Salon des Indépendents.
Saint Tropez après L'orage is painted in the most extraordinarily musical harmony of purples with a lightness of touch characteristic of his best pictures of the mid 1890s. These works have a subtlety reminiscent of the pointillist works of the 1880s but the harmonies of colour are much softer and more lyrical. The brushstroke is still light and feathery.
1895 marked the year that Signac stopped numbering his paintings with opus numbers and also marked a period when he was painting more and more from memory and notes in the studio. He had discovered Saint Tropez whilst on a cruise through the Mediterranean in the 1880s and finally settled there in 1892. Many of his most successful works of the 1890s, including the present picture, were sent to Paris for exhibition at the Salon des Indépendents each year. Previously in the collection of Signac's family, the present picture was exhibited at the Salon in 1897.
To be included in the forthcoming Paul Signac catalogue raisonné currently being prepared by Franoise Cachin.
'I have begun to work again. I have started a painting of 25 Orage au fond du golfe from memory. I wish to achieve a dramatic effect: a harmony of green and violet with a great shaft of yellow light bursting through the clouds. I lack visual reference. I am waiting to see a similar effect again in order to finish it. During the festival I will make some studies, panel paintings and watercolours to paint a port en fête with flags and filled with sunshine. Alongside a port, le matin becalmed, a port, soleil couchant and a port, mistral, this will make a whole series'.
Signac worked on this series throughout the summer of 1895, producing a number of impressive and highly successful oils, including La Bouée rouge, now housed in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, and the very lyrical Saint Tropez, L'orage which was purchased by a young German artist friend of Signac called Yvo Hauptmann who exhibited neo-Impressionist paintings alongside Signac in the Salon des Indépendents.
Saint Tropez après L'orage is painted in the most extraordinarily musical harmony of purples with a lightness of touch characteristic of his best pictures of the mid 1890s. These works have a subtlety reminiscent of the pointillist works of the 1880s but the harmonies of colour are much softer and more lyrical. The brushstroke is still light and feathery.
1895 marked the year that Signac stopped numbering his paintings with opus numbers and also marked a period when he was painting more and more from memory and notes in the studio. He had discovered Saint Tropez whilst on a cruise through the Mediterranean in the 1880s and finally settled there in 1892. Many of his most successful works of the 1890s, including the present picture, were sent to Paris for exhibition at the Salon des Indépendents each year. Previously in the collection of Signac's family, the present picture was exhibited at the Salon in 1897.
To be included in the forthcoming Paul Signac catalogue raisonné currently being prepared by Franoise Cachin.