Paul Signac (1863-1935) Attributed To, Watercolor Drawing, Sailboat In A Port (nice?)

Work attributed to the neo-impressionist painter Paul Signac, who in 1899 published the manifesto “From Eugène Delacroix to neo-impressionism”, of which he was the founder with his late friend, Georges Seurat. This watercolor study is probably the result of the extraordinary pictorial report that Signac devoted, between 1929 and 1931, to a hundred ports in France. A work in the work. A work for itself which frees itself to a certain extent from pointillism but not from color, primary and secondary, affixed in pure touches. Passionate about the sea, renowned sailor and painter, Signac, more than a century apart, followed in those of Joseph Vernet, illustrious painter in the royal navy of Louis XV. In three years, from Sète to Menton via Brest, Audierne, Saint Malo, Bayonne, Marseille ... whatever the weather, Signac put his easel in vivo to create two different watercolors in each of the ports where he will stay as part of this artistic challenge; one for him, the other for his patron and friend, Gaston Lévy, which will be titled and signed. To help him meet this challenge, Gaston Lévy provided him with a luxury car with driver. A testamentary work that remained confidential during his lifetime. And today coveted, dispersed in private collections, notably that of a great American collector of Signac who donated it to a foundation in Arkansas. In 2010, the Le Havre Museum managed to bring together 90 of the 200 watercolors for an exhibition devoted to this series of port watercolors. Not all of them are known - most of them not being exhibited - and despite this exceptional context of monographic collation, the city of Le Havre could not find traces of the watercolor that Signac devoted to their city. In this large watercolor work strongly iodized and in different formats, primitive and sometimes more sophisticated, an ode to port France, we can read all the freshness, all the gluttony of the aesthetics of Signac. His unique genius of color, the primacy of sensation, of the first movement of perception under the impetus of the prime sketch as here. In this subtle watercolor dominates a pastel palette distilling a warm light which is reminiscent of southern softness enhanced by brighter touches of green and red. The ocher of the facades is confronted with fine hatching betraying the rain piercing the blue sky. Two sailboats are moored aesthetically crossing their masts rather than the iron. A small tourist locomotive (red train with a green plume spurting out to the right of the work as an indication of its location). Artistic quote intended to facilitate identification, probably metaphorical, since it appears on the platforms themselves. The train is reminiscent of the Pignes train, a locomotive unchanged since 1892 which travels from Provence to Nice. The sketch of a statue with a feminine curve completes the setting - unless it is the statue of Charles-Félix of Savoy with a draped sway. It could then be the port of Nice from another point of view than his watercolor of 1922. This time, centered on sailboats. Nice or elsewhere ... Under the colors of Signac, how beautiful the stopover is. This work was appraised by the De Bayser firm, which established the attribution to Paul Signac. The knowledge of its watercolor corpus, the historiography - museum - of its port challenge, confirms this attribution.
Framed: 32cm x 29 cm / At sight: 16.1 cm x 13.8cm / Drawing only: 15.2cm x 12.6cm
Beautiful frame