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拍品專文
Painted when Signac was 22 years old, Bateaux, Ponton des bains beautifully captures the young artist’s early manner, in which he embraced the stylistic and compositional strategies of the Impressionists. Signac’s desire to become a painter was crystallized in 1883 when he visited the Claude Monet exhibition at Galerie Durand-Ruel. He had received no formal artistic instruction, but devoted himself fully to the study of works by Monet, Edouard Manet, Edgar Degas and Gustave Caillebotte.
The heterogeneous landscape of Signac’s suburban hometown, Asnières, northwest of Paris, was a source of great inspiration during these early years. The windows of the Signac family home looked out onto a garden, the Seine and the smokestacks of factories in Clichy. An ardent boater, Signac enjoyed spending time on the Seine and painting images of the river, and the leisure and industrial activities which took place on its waters. His first boat was a canoe named Manet-Zola-Wagner, an expression of his youthful enthusiasm for modernity. In the present work, the vantage point is in a position in the middle of the Seine, a foot bridge centrally placed, inviting the viewer to enter the scene. This compositional device anticipates the vantage point of the holiday sailor which Signac would increasingly utilize, looking at the landscape from the end of his boat (fig. 1). In Bateaux, Ponton des bains water sports and leisure activities, as represented by the canoes and small sailboats peacefully floating on the water, are juxtaposed with the rampant industrialization of the town, articulated through the bridges and smokestacks visible in the background (fig. 2).
In 1886, Paul Adam explained in a short critique of Signac’s work in the Revue contemporaine, littéraire, politique et philosophique: “The outskirts of Paris with their skies streaked by factory chimneys, trees planted in lines, the flickering of river waters, leprous banks, sometimes visions of the blue sea: these are the things that Signac loves to paint. Among all the others his paintings clamor for attention with their intense color, with a richness that is all his own. Still very young, Signac possesses admirable tone, a sense of what is Parisian that avoids caricature and ugliness” (quoted in The New Painting Impressionism, 1874-1886, exh. cat., The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1986, p. 473).
While capturing the preoccupation with light and the loose compositional strategies of the Impressionists, the present work was painted at a time when the young artist was on the verge of a breakthrough which would transform his artistic production. The broad brushstrokes and dense layering of color in Bateaux, Ponton des bains illustrate Signac’s desire to capture the play of light and color in landscape, anticipating the landscapes to come when, with Georges Seurat, he fully embraced the Pointillist style. Seurat developed and was practicing a new way of painting, seen tentatively at first in small studies during the early 1880s, then more advanced in Un baignade, Asnières, 1883-1884, his first masterwork, which had deeply impressed Signac at the first Salon des Indépendants in 1884. Signac observed Seurat at work on his next pioneering project, Une dimanche à la Grande Jatte, completed in October 1885. Signac painted his first divisionist canvases at Asnières the following year, in the spring of 1886.
The heterogeneous landscape of Signac’s suburban hometown, Asnières, northwest of Paris, was a source of great inspiration during these early years. The windows of the Signac family home looked out onto a garden, the Seine and the smokestacks of factories in Clichy. An ardent boater, Signac enjoyed spending time on the Seine and painting images of the river, and the leisure and industrial activities which took place on its waters. His first boat was a canoe named Manet-Zola-Wagner, an expression of his youthful enthusiasm for modernity. In the present work, the vantage point is in a position in the middle of the Seine, a foot bridge centrally placed, inviting the viewer to enter the scene. This compositional device anticipates the vantage point of the holiday sailor which Signac would increasingly utilize, looking at the landscape from the end of his boat (fig. 1). In Bateaux, Ponton des bains water sports and leisure activities, as represented by the canoes and small sailboats peacefully floating on the water, are juxtaposed with the rampant industrialization of the town, articulated through the bridges and smokestacks visible in the background (fig. 2).
In 1886, Paul Adam explained in a short critique of Signac’s work in the Revue contemporaine, littéraire, politique et philosophique: “The outskirts of Paris with their skies streaked by factory chimneys, trees planted in lines, the flickering of river waters, leprous banks, sometimes visions of the blue sea: these are the things that Signac loves to paint. Among all the others his paintings clamor for attention with their intense color, with a richness that is all his own. Still very young, Signac possesses admirable tone, a sense of what is Parisian that avoids caricature and ugliness” (quoted in The New Painting Impressionism, 1874-1886, exh. cat., The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1986, p. 473).
While capturing the preoccupation with light and the loose compositional strategies of the Impressionists, the present work was painted at a time when the young artist was on the verge of a breakthrough which would transform his artistic production. The broad brushstrokes and dense layering of color in Bateaux, Ponton des bains illustrate Signac’s desire to capture the play of light and color in landscape, anticipating the landscapes to come when, with Georges Seurat, he fully embraced the Pointillist style. Seurat developed and was practicing a new way of painting, seen tentatively at first in small studies during the early 1880s, then more advanced in Un baignade, Asnières, 1883-1884, his first masterwork, which had deeply impressed Signac at the first Salon des Indépendants in 1884. Signac observed Seurat at work on his next pioneering project, Une dimanche à la Grande Jatte, completed in October 1885. Signac painted his first divisionist canvases at Asnières the following year, in the spring of 1886.