Paul Signac

Already as a fifteen-year-old, Paul Signac had seen works by Gustave Caillebotte, Mary Cassatt, Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, and Camille Pissarro at the fourth Impressionist exhibition in Paris in the spring of 1879. A year later, the first solo exhibition of Monet’s work at the gallery La Vie Moderne provided the impetus for Signac’s decision to pursue a career as an artist. Largely self-taught, he studied with the academic painter Émile Bin for a short time in 1883 and soon thereafter moved into a studio in the trendy artists’ district of Montmartre. Monet’s work remained his most important point of orientation until the mid-1880s. In 1882 Signac, who was also an enthusiastic sailor, spent a number of weeks in Port-en-Bessin in Normandy, where he would return the following two summers for longer stints of painting. His landscapes from 1883 show the influence of Monet’s views of the beaches of Pourville and Varengeville, which Signac had seen in March of that year at the gallery of Paul Durand-Ruel.

In this painting, the narrow strip of sandy beach functions as the central visual axis, glowing brightly against the dominant green and blue tones of the composition. In contrast to the flat treatment of the cloudless sky in the upper half of the picture, the other elements are delineated using shimmering, impasto brushstrokes. The influence of Monet is unmistakable in the reflections on the gently moving water to the right. Despite this tendency toward abstraction, Signac also endeavored to achieve topographical precision, as manifested by the precisely rendered silhouette of the hill as well as the architectural details in the center of the picture. When Signac returned to Port-en-Bessin in 1884, he painted another view of the same location: Port-en-Bessin, The Beach (1884), now in the collection of the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid.

In the catalogue raisonné of Signac’s paintings compiled by Françoise Cachin and Marina Ferretti-Bocquillon, Port-en-Bessin is listed as no. 25.

Daniel Zamani

Master Works from the Collection of Sir Leon and Lady Trout, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, September–November 1977, no. 54

L'Impressionismo e l'età di van Gogh, Casa dei Carraresi, Treviso, 2002/03

Impressionism: The Art of Landscape, Museum Barberini, Potsdam, January 21–May 28, 2017

Impressionism: The Hasso Plattner Collection, Museum Barberini, Potsdam, from September 5, 2020

July 4, 1949, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, lot 65
n.d., Robert Behar
n.d., Myriam Sacher, London
April 16, 1975, Sotheby’s, London, lot 7, consigned by the above
Leon Trout, Brisbane, acquired at the above sale
1982, Lady Trout, Brisbane, inherited from the above
April 3, 1989, Christie’s, London, lot 13, consigned by the above
n.d., Private collection, Geneva
May 14, 1990, Regency Hotel, New York, Habsburg Feldman Collection, lot 10, unsold
n.d., Private collection
May 15, 1997, Christie’s, New York, lot 241, unsold
n.d., Private collection
November 9, 1999, Christie’s, New York, lot 244
March 15, 2000, Marc-Arthur Kohn at Hôtel Drouot, Paris, lot 2

Private collection, acquired at the above sale
August 16, 2001, Marc-Arthur Kohn at Hôtel Drouot, Paris, lot 147, unsold
June 22, 2005, Christie’s, London, lot 153, unsold
February 6, 2008, Sotheby’s, London, lot 423
Private collection, acquired at the above sale
February 7, 2012, Christie’s, London, lot 40, consigned by the above

Paul Signac, Cahier d'opus 1887–1902 (The artist’s list), no. 21 (Port en Bessin)

Paul Signac, Cahier manuscrit 1902–1909 (The artist’s list), no. 30 (Port en Bessin)

Gaston Lévy and Paul Signac, Pré-catalogue 1929–1932 (The artist’s catalogue), p. 21, ill. p. 71 (Port-en-Bessin)

Master Works from the Collection of Sir Leon and Lady Trout, exh. cat. Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane 1977, no. 54, ill. p. 20

Françoise Cachin and Marina Ferretti-Bocquillon, Signac: Catalogue raisonné de l'œuvre peint, Paris 2000, no. 25, p. 150, ill. p. 87, 150

Turner e gli impressionisti: La grande storia del paesaggio moderno in Europa, exh. cat. Museo di Santa Giulia, Brescia 2006, no. 245, ill. p. 406

Impressionism: The Art of Landscape, exh. cat. Museum Barberini, Potsdam 2017, no. 16, ill. p. 110