The peaceful, light and colourful Mediterranean world of Paul Signac
The small reflections of a peaceful world illuminate the horizon and the sea, the paths and trees that remain unlit on bright nights, the quiet, picturesque and unknown harbours of the Mediterranean shine through small, careful touches. As if all washed away through a ritual of meticulous capture in the Mediterranean light and in the places discovered by the artists who arrived, following the Mediterranean coastline, in Lavandou, Collioure, Cassis, Saint-Tropez, Antibes, Marseille, Cavalier, Agge, Adeor. There is a way of looking at these works from a distance, when the little brushstrokes blur somewhat, the colours touching each other, gaining an area and fading into the horizon and the earth; and another, when you get close and see, digit by digit, the colour standing out and creating the volumes and the inner light, shimmering almost inexplicably. It’s worth noting this brushstroke that may have quickly left the avant-garde of its time, but opened other paths, to subsequent artists, perhaps more daring, that led to the movements of the 20th century.
The exhibition “Neo-Impressionism and the Mediterranean”at the Vassilis & Elise Goulandris Foundationis a comprehensive tribute to the Neo-Impressionist movement, focusing on the Mediterranean region. The 55 works in the exhibition by Paul Signac, Henri-Edmond Cross, Maximilien Luce, Théo van Rysselberghe, Henri Matisse, Henri Manguin and Louis Valtat, there born from the union of Mediterranean light with the artists’ desire to leave Paris, travel to quieter places and uninhibitedly study light and colour, translating them onto their canvas with the utmost precision.
Many art critics and fellow painters, including Camille Pissarro, predicted the end of the neo-impressionist art movement, which they misinterpreted as an ephemeral and unruly offshoot of impressionism.
The term “neo-impressionism” was originally proposed by the French art critic Félix Fénéon, who wanted to make the association with the Impressionist movement, using the prefix “neo-” to emphasise the differences between the two trends. The term prevailed over the term “division” (“division” or “divisionalism”) defended by Signac, as well as over pointillism, which gradually began to appear in newspapers, but was considered inappropriate by the artists of the movement, as it described only the process (the term is still widely used today).
No one can know what would have become of this movement and how it would have evolved had the pioneer, the founder of neo-impressionism Georges Seurat not died at the age of 31 in 1891. Thandée Natanson writes that if neo-impressionism were a religion, Seurat would be its messiah and Signac its prophet.
Many art critics and fellow painters, including Camille Pissarro, predict the end of this artistic movement, which they misinterpret as an ephemeral and unruly offshoot of Impressionism. In fact, Seurat’s death sealed the closure of the first chapter of neo-impressionism. A second chapter will open very soon, far from Paris, on the shores of the Mediterranean. And Signac, now at the head of the group, is leading it towards new horizons, both geographical and artistic.
Signac remained faithful to the neo-impressionist technique until the end of his life, and this can be seen in the more than twenty of his works on display at the Basil & Elise Goulandris Foundation. His pictorial path follows the soft coastline of the Mediterranean, following the advice of Edmont Cross, who was the first to discover the Mediterranean coast in 1883 when he sought a secluded place far from the onslaught of industry and tourism, and in 1891 settled in Campasonne, near Lavandou, and then permanently in Saint-Clair.
Monmartre and the heart of neo-impressionism
Paul Signac came from a middle-class Parisian family and spent his early years in Montmartre, in a thriving artistic environment. His parents encouraged him to follow the artistic movement and avant-garde culture that flourished in the narrow streets of the Parisian quarter; the young Signac was quickly impressed by the work of the Impressionists and their aesthetic. When his father died, his mother moved to the then-new Paris suburb of Asnières.
The area did not appeal to Signac, who returned to Montmartre and rented a room. So he divided his time between Asnières and Paris. However, Asnières provided rich subject matter for his early works; at the same time he began to take up sailing. His first boat, which he acquired at 16, was a canoe that he named “Manet Zola Wagner” after his three idols in painting, literature and music respectively. In Montmartre he made friends with painters and entered literary circles, associating with the critics Gustave Kahn and Félix Fénéon ; many of those he met in those early years later became ardent supporters of his work and style.
His first paintings date from 1881-1882, he was only 18 years old. Apart from having received some rudimentary training in the studio of the painter Émile Bin, taking free lessons, he was almost self-taught. He immersed himself in studying the paintings of leading Impressionists, including Monet, Manet, Caillebotte and Degas. One of his favourite places to paint was a seaside town, Port-en-Bessin, whose depictions from 1883 reflect the influence of the works he had seen at Monet’s exhibition in a gallery on the Boulevard de la Madeleine.
By then he had fully adopted the impressionist style. In 1884, at the first Salon des Artistes Indépendants, he met Georges Seurat. Future neo-impressionists such as Dubois-Pillet, Henri Edmond Cross and Charles Angrand participated in this pioneering exhibition. He and Seurat became friends, sharing Michel-Eugène Chevreul’s colour theory as well as theories on optics, including in relation to art and aesthetics.
In October 1885, Seurat began perfecting the method of optical blending, placing small dots of pure pigment side by side directly on the surface of the canvas, then letting the eye mix them. He had already begun work on his now famous painting, A Sunday afternoon on the island of La Grande Jatte (1884-86). Both Signac and Seurat were invited to show their works, all done in the new style, at the eighth and last Impressionist exhibition, although there were objections to this from Eugene Manet, Édouard’s brother and Berthe Morisot’s husband, and from Degas. They eventually showed their work and the critical response was positive. Their friendship lasted ten years, until Seurat’s death.
The discovery of the Mediterranean coast
Signac met Vincent van Gogh in Paris in 1886 and the two artists developed a friendly relationship, often going together to locations such as Asnières to paint both interiors and exterior scenes. A year later Signac visited the small port of Colours, east of the Pyrenees, and made a series of seascapes. In 1889 he visited Cassis, having previously stopped in Arles to visit Van Gogh, who was hospitalized after his self-mutilation. After Seurat’s death, devastated, he wrote to Edmond Cross that he wanted to find a quiet corner to paint in and a good harbour for Olympia, his boat, which he named in homage to Manet.
He paints meanwhile, and his neo-impressionist style has become looser, more expressive and colourful. Passionate about sailing, following the urging of Cross, who lives in Saint-Clair, near Lavandou, and considers it the most beautiful place in the world, he heads for Saint-Tropez, which is nothing like the later cosmopolitan place, salty with tourism, socialites and stars, and decides to settle there. He writes to his mother that he is sailing on a sea of happiness and that five minutes from town he has discovered a hut, lost in pine trees and roses, the famous La Ramade, a dream retreat. Signac, according to legend, arrived in the Mediterranean from Brittany in his sailboat and entered the port of St Tropez in May 1892, manoeuvring his boat with great mastery and impressing the elderly seafarers watching him.
As the painting materials he wanted were slow in arriving from Paris, he tried watercolour, which offered a fluidity and freedom unlike his previous work with oils. Later, when he has decided that this is “his place”, he buys the La Hune estate, which will soon become a meeting place for painters exploring colour. From 1892 to 1895 Signac painted exclusively the beauties of St Tropez.
He built a large studio in his house, which was completed in the summer of 1898. There the artist produced some of the most colourful and famous works of the Neo-Impressionist style, particularly works of boats, beaches and seascapes, the masterpieces of his prolific output. In the summers he invited his friends to St. Tropez because Signac was not only the “beacon” of the Neo-Impressionists but also the theorist of the movement. He lived in a place that enchanted and inspired him, in a house bursting with life, among artists who stayed with him in the summers and were inspired by the bright light and tame nature.
Signac’s magical watercolours
Watercolour and pencil on paper, 25×40,6 cm Private collection
Signac took up watercolour at Pissaro’s urging and initially found it very difficult to tame the medium, but through this technique he was able to free himself from the constraints of revisionism, to capture the moment and not just immortalise it. His watercolours are complete works, liberated from realism. In St. Tropez he began to favour watercolour, a technique that allowed him to work with colour outdoors. Signac was now emerging as a leading watercolourist, able to capture with rare talent the beauty of the moment, to which the Impressionists attached great importance.
Very soon his watercolours, which he insisted on exhibiting alongside his paintings, attracted the attention of painting enthusiasts. Moreover, the watercolour technique offered him the opportunity to travel with lighter equipment and to make more and more studies of works. In La Hune, from 1895 onwards, he produced the paintings that inspired these studies. As a sailing enthusiast, he sailed in his small boat to almost all the ports of France, in Holland and around the Mediterranean as far as Istanbul, making vivid, colourful watercolours, quickly sketched from life. From 1910, watercolour certainly took precedence over his oil paintings.
Watercolour painted with pen | 15,5 × 20 cm Private collection
The pace of his artistic output did not stop as he grew older. Even in the early 20th century he was still creating art, watercolours, oil paintings and drawings. In 1902 he exhibited over 100 watercolours at the Maison de l’Art Nouveau, Siegfried Bing’s gallery in Paris. By 1911 watercolor had become his main medium; he again exhibited a large series entitled “The Bridges of Paris” at the famous Bernheim-Jeune, also in Paris. He went to Antibes in 1915, where he was appointed Peintre Officiel de la Marine (Official Naval Painter). For Signac, to live was to paint and to paint was to live. He never stopped producing art. He began another series of paintings of French ports in 1929.
Signac died on 15 August 1935, aged 71, of septicaemia. He contributed as little as anyone to the liberation of artists and art from the traditional hierarchies and conventions imposed by the Academy and the Salons. In terms of his artistic output and the radical innovation he brought, Signac was hugely influential on Henri Matisse and André Derain, the fearmongers who modified his technique and imitated his use of bright, highly expressive colours. As president of the Societé des Artistes Independants from 1908 until his death, he encouraged younger artists (he was the first to buy a Matisse painting), exhibiting the then controversial works of the phobolists and cubists.
