Paul Signac (1863-1935)

In the early months of 1897, Paul Signac wrote to his friend Henri Edmond Cross saying that he had painted several pictures in Mont Saint-Michel, and that the best were studies of the varying weather effects. Mont Saint-Michel. Brume et soleil, demonstrates the extent to which Signac aimed to 'link up the triangle of the Mont with the curve of the river' (Signac, quoted in F. Cachin, op. cit, p. 231). However, due to the impracticalities of painting a study of the weather 'on site', what with the length of time that the lengthy process takes, the paintings that he described to Cross were probably studies, rather than finished works, and it is believed that the series of finished Mont Saint-Michel pictures was completed in Saint-Tropez later that year. (This explains why, in his description of the earlier Mont Saint-Michel paintings, he refers to them as being rendered 'en deux coups de pinceaux', a somewhat unlikely description of the Pointillist Mont Saint-Michel. Brume et soleil it is rather into the latter category that such evidently hastily-painted works as C.308 and 309, both entitled Mont Saint-Michel, fall).
Mont Saint-Michel. Brume et soleil was given by Signac to the painter Théo van Rysselberghe, possibly in return for a portrait that the latter had painted of the former the previous year Van Rysselberghe had been for some time an adherent to Pointillism, and his ties with Signac and the other French Neo-Impressionists had been strengthened by their joint participation in the exhibitions of the Les XX in Brussels. Van Rysselberghe's divisionist portrait showed Signac at the tiller aboard his boat, reflecting his enthusiasm for sailing as well as their joint adherence to Neo-Impressionism. This was an important period in Van Rysselberghe's life as well, as it was only the year after Mont Saint-Michel. Brume et soleil was painted that he finally fulfilled his dream of moving to Paris, where he thrived.

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