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Lot Essay
A prismatic vision of resplendent, glittering color, Paul Signac’s Quimper (Quai de l’Odet) depicts the Odet river as it runs through the city of Quimper in Brittany, a rainbow visible above the Saint Corentin Cathedral. The light is brilliant and crystalline, a world bathed in the clarity that follows a thunderstorm. An enthusiastic yachtsman and member of the prestigious sailing club, Cercle de la Voile de Paris, Signac would have reveled in the array of boats and reflections at play along the placid water. Painted in 1922-1923, and formerly in the collection of the artist’s daughter Ginette, Quimper (Quai de l'Odet) has been held in the Bill and Dorothy Fisher Collection for more than sixty years.
Following the end of the First World War, Signac spent much time travelling around France. He frequently visited Claude Monet in Giverny, returned to painting the bridges that lined the Seine in Paris, and began to explore Brittany more thoroughly, including Lézardrieux, where he vacationed during the mid-1920s. All the while, Signac sought out maritime motifs although, unlike the Impressionists, he was less interested in the people crowding the harbors and riverbanks than in the architectural forms of bridges and buildings, and the way such structures interacted visually with the water.
It was water, above all, that was Signac’s preferred subject and his view of Quimper was informed by his own enduring passion for life at sea. The artist had been devoted to sailing since adolescence when he purchased his first boat. In his early artistic forays, Signac would take out the canoe he kept at Asnières as he looked for various scenes to paint. Throughout the ensuing years, he often sailed around France and beyond, docking at different ports and harbors to paint the myriad seaside towns that appealed to him. Anne Distel has observed the influence of Signac’s “nautical eye” on his art, and, indeed, his entire career would be shaped by sailing (“Portrait of Paul Signac: Yachtsman, Writer, Indépendent, and Revolutionary” in M. Ferretti-Bocquillon, ed., Signac, 1863-1935, exh. cat., Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, Paris, 2001, p. 37). The point of view represented in Quimper (Quai de l'Odet) suggests that Signac painted the river from the water, positioned between its two banks, a vantage point previously taken up by Eugène Boudin in his Le Port du Quimper, executed more than six decades earlier. Concentrating on the profile of the sailboat moored along the quay, Signac has paid particular attention to its mast and boom, capturing the intricate system with a precision that makes clear his knowledge of such crafts.
Using individual touches of paint, Signac described the river and its environs, and the present work is composed of a medley of vivid hues: royal purple, lavender, and rose that make up the trees; the dazzling green and cobalt water; and sapphire blue sky adorned by a shimmering rainbow. The use of pure color reveals Signac’s enduring commitment to the Neo-Impressionist technique. Along with Georges Seurat, in the mid-1880s, Signac had developed Pointillism, a pioneering style in which the artists applied color to the canvas with a rigorously implemented methodology. Inspired by color theories pioneered by Ogden Rood and Michel Eugène Chevreul, Signac and Seurat began to divide colors across their canvases using tiny points of paint, so that they would combine optically in the eye of their viewer.
While he never completely deserted the pointillist technique that he had helped to develop, following Seurat’s death in 1891, Signac slowly began to move away from its regimented application towards a looser, less rigid approach. The expressive brushwork that defines the surface of Quimper (Quai de l'Odet) is a hallmark of the artist’s later work. Here, the brushstrokes form small rectangles that together produce a mosaic-like arrangement tessellating across the picture plane. The greens and purples that cover the canvas seem to emanate light, bathing the scene in a luminous glow and producing a harmonious balance between water and sky. As Signac explained in his treatise D’Eugène Delacroix au néo-impressionisme, published in 1899, the Neo-Impressionists had one goal: “to give color as much radiance as possible” (D’Eugène Delacroix au néo-impressionisme, Paris, 1921, p. 76).
Signac would continue to paint Brittany throughout the 1920s, returning to Quimper in 1929 to depict a similar view in L’Odet à Quimper (Cachin, no. 590; Private collection). He was, during this period, working on his Ports de France watercolors, a series inspired by the eighteenth century French painter Claude-Joseph Vernet, whose Vues des ports de France were created between 1754 and 1765. It was to be a triumphal ensemble for an artist whose place in art history had long been cemented. The years leading up to and directly following the creation of Quimper (Quai de l'Odet) only furthered Signac’s reputation. In 1922, the first monograph dedicated to the artist’s oeuvre was published, and his painting Le Port de Marseille (Cachin, no. 543; Musée Cantini, Marseille) was acquired by the French state. Signac’s compositions, at once methodical and romantic, influenced a generation of younger artists, including Henri Matisse, many of whom tried their hand at Neo-Impressionism as a means of resolving their understanding of and approach to color.
Quimper (Quai de l’Odet) was previously in the collection of Henri Canonne, the Parisian pharmacist and industrialist who was an enthusiastic collector of Impressionist and modern art. Canonne’s collection included some forty works by Monet, several of which are now in museum collections, including Nymphéas, soleil couchant (circa 1907; The National Gallery, London), Nymphéas (1907; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston) and Les Maisons dans la neige, Norvège (1895; Denver Museum of Art). Alongside these, Canonne collected paintings by Paul Cezanne, Pierre Bonnard, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Edouard Vuillard, among others. In 1925, Signac bought back Quimper (Quai de l'Odet) from Canonne in order to gift the painting to his daughter, Ginette.
Following the end of the First World War, Signac spent much time travelling around France. He frequently visited Claude Monet in Giverny, returned to painting the bridges that lined the Seine in Paris, and began to explore Brittany more thoroughly, including Lézardrieux, where he vacationed during the mid-1920s. All the while, Signac sought out maritime motifs although, unlike the Impressionists, he was less interested in the people crowding the harbors and riverbanks than in the architectural forms of bridges and buildings, and the way such structures interacted visually with the water.
It was water, above all, that was Signac’s preferred subject and his view of Quimper was informed by his own enduring passion for life at sea. The artist had been devoted to sailing since adolescence when he purchased his first boat. In his early artistic forays, Signac would take out the canoe he kept at Asnières as he looked for various scenes to paint. Throughout the ensuing years, he often sailed around France and beyond, docking at different ports and harbors to paint the myriad seaside towns that appealed to him. Anne Distel has observed the influence of Signac’s “nautical eye” on his art, and, indeed, his entire career would be shaped by sailing (“Portrait of Paul Signac: Yachtsman, Writer, Indépendent, and Revolutionary” in M. Ferretti-Bocquillon, ed., Signac, 1863-1935, exh. cat., Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, Paris, 2001, p. 37). The point of view represented in Quimper (Quai de l'Odet) suggests that Signac painted the river from the water, positioned between its two banks, a vantage point previously taken up by Eugène Boudin in his Le Port du Quimper, executed more than six decades earlier. Concentrating on the profile of the sailboat moored along the quay, Signac has paid particular attention to its mast and boom, capturing the intricate system with a precision that makes clear his knowledge of such crafts.
Using individual touches of paint, Signac described the river and its environs, and the present work is composed of a medley of vivid hues: royal purple, lavender, and rose that make up the trees; the dazzling green and cobalt water; and sapphire blue sky adorned by a shimmering rainbow. The use of pure color reveals Signac’s enduring commitment to the Neo-Impressionist technique. Along with Georges Seurat, in the mid-1880s, Signac had developed Pointillism, a pioneering style in which the artists applied color to the canvas with a rigorously implemented methodology. Inspired by color theories pioneered by Ogden Rood and Michel Eugène Chevreul, Signac and Seurat began to divide colors across their canvases using tiny points of paint, so that they would combine optically in the eye of their viewer.
While he never completely deserted the pointillist technique that he had helped to develop, following Seurat’s death in 1891, Signac slowly began to move away from its regimented application towards a looser, less rigid approach. The expressive brushwork that defines the surface of Quimper (Quai de l'Odet) is a hallmark of the artist’s later work. Here, the brushstrokes form small rectangles that together produce a mosaic-like arrangement tessellating across the picture plane. The greens and purples that cover the canvas seem to emanate light, bathing the scene in a luminous glow and producing a harmonious balance between water and sky. As Signac explained in his treatise D’Eugène Delacroix au néo-impressionisme, published in 1899, the Neo-Impressionists had one goal: “to give color as much radiance as possible” (D’Eugène Delacroix au néo-impressionisme, Paris, 1921, p. 76).
Signac would continue to paint Brittany throughout the 1920s, returning to Quimper in 1929 to depict a similar view in L’Odet à Quimper (Cachin, no. 590; Private collection). He was, during this period, working on his Ports de France watercolors, a series inspired by the eighteenth century French painter Claude-Joseph Vernet, whose Vues des ports de France were created between 1754 and 1765. It was to be a triumphal ensemble for an artist whose place in art history had long been cemented. The years leading up to and directly following the creation of Quimper (Quai de l'Odet) only furthered Signac’s reputation. In 1922, the first monograph dedicated to the artist’s oeuvre was published, and his painting Le Port de Marseille (Cachin, no. 543; Musée Cantini, Marseille) was acquired by the French state. Signac’s compositions, at once methodical and romantic, influenced a generation of younger artists, including Henri Matisse, many of whom tried their hand at Neo-Impressionism as a means of resolving their understanding of and approach to color.
Quimper (Quai de l’Odet) was previously in the collection of Henri Canonne, the Parisian pharmacist and industrialist who was an enthusiastic collector of Impressionist and modern art. Canonne’s collection included some forty works by Monet, several of which are now in museum collections, including Nymphéas, soleil couchant (circa 1907; The National Gallery, London), Nymphéas (1907; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston) and Les Maisons dans la neige, Norvège (1895; Denver Museum of Art). Alongside these, Canonne collected paintings by Paul Cezanne, Pierre Bonnard, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Edouard Vuillard, among others. In 1925, Signac bought back Quimper (Quai de l'Odet) from Canonne in order to gift the painting to his daughter, Ginette.