Paul Signac

The emergence of Neo-Impressionism in the circle of Georges Seurat between 1884 and 1886 marked a turning point in the development of French painting, one that would influence Signac’s oeuvre as well. While Signac’s works from the early 1880s such as Port-en-Bessin were indebted to Claude Monet, Clipper demonstrates a turn toward the painting of Georges Seurat. The latter’s monumental A Sunday on La Grande Jatte (1884–86, The Art Institute of Chicago) had founded the technique of Divisionism—the methodical dissection of the picture plane into individual dots of color. In 1886, when Seurat’s painting was shown at the eighth and final Impressionist Exhibition in Paris alongside stylistically related works by Signac as well as Camille and Lucien Pissarro, the critic Félix Fénéon coined the term néo-impressionniste. The label soon gained currency, and the movement was interpreted partly as the logical continuation, partly as the radical rejection of Impressionist premises. Like his colleague Camille Pissarro, Signac viewed Neo-Impressionism as a scientifically grounded style, one that replaced subjective sense experience with a foundation of color theory and the science of optics. Charles Blanc’s treatise Grammaire des arts du dessin of 1867, with its focus on the visual power of stark color contrasts, was influential in this regard.

Clipper, painted in 1887, is among Signac’s first compositions in the Divisionist style and shows the Seine River near Asnières, where Seurat’s first Pointillist landscapes had also been created. The parallel bridges framing Signac’s composition were depicted the same year by other artists including Vincent van Gogh (Bridges across the Seine at Asnières, Emil Bührle Collection, Zurich) and Émile Bernard (Iron Bridges at Asnières, The Museum of Modern Art, New York). The motif of a river landscape with boats against the background of modern industrial architecture recalls Impressionist depictions of the Seine, such as Claude Monet’s The Bridge at Argenteuil from 1874 (National Gallery of Art, Washington). Stylistically, the influence of Seurat is evident in the carefully orchestrated color contrasts of pink and blue, while the dot-like, Neo-Impressionist elaboration of the picture surface—the so-called pointillé—appears in the sky in the upper third of the composition. The orange-red sailboat sets a strong colored accent, while the gently tilting mast gives a dynamic quality to the composition and visually counteracts the static, horizontal organization of the picture.

In the catalogue raisonné of Signac’s paintings compiled by Françoise Cachin and Marina Ferretti-Bocquillon, Clipper is listed as no. 141.

Daniel Zamani

5e Exposition des XX, Musée d’Art Moderne, Brussels 1888, no. 2

Important XIX & XX Century Paintings and Sculpture, Lefevre Gallery, London, November 20–December 20, 1975, no. 13

Seurat and the Bathers, The National Gallery, London, July 2–September 28, 1997, no. 90

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

n.d., Mme Gustave Kahn, Paris
n.d., Galerie Le Barc de Boutteville, Paris
n.d., Ernest Chausson, acquired from the above
June 5, 1936, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, collection of Mme Chausson, lot 40
n.d., Pierre Delebart, Paris
n.d., Edward Speelman, London
July 20, 1960, Private collection, Europe, acquired from the above
1976, probably Alex Reid & Lefevre (The Lefevre Gallery), London, on commission
May 11, 1999, Sotheby’s, New York, lot 115, consigned by European private collection
Private collection, California, acquired at the above sale
May 7, 2008, Sotheby’s, New York, lot 9, consigned by the above
A. Alfred Taubman, acquired at the above sale
November 4, 2015, Sotheby’s, New York, collection of A. Alfred Taubman, lot 30

Richard Thomson, “Van Gogh in Paris: the Fortifications Drawings of 1887,” in Jong Holland (September 1984), ill. p. 5

Important XIX & XX Century Paintings and Sculpture, exh. cat. The Lefevre Gallery, London 1975

Seurat and the Bathers, exh. cat. National Gallery, London 1997

Françoise Cachin and Marina Ferretti-Bocquillon, Signac: Catalogue raisonné de l'œuvre peint, Paris 2000, no. 141, p. 180, ill. p. 95, 180

Impressionism: The Art of Landscape, exh. cat. Museum Barberini, Potsdam 2017, no. 35, p. 132, ill. p. 141

Van Gogh and the Avant-Garde: Along the Seine, exh. cat. The Art Institute, Chicago 2023, no. 92, p. 121, ill.  p. 16, 122