Paul Signac valuation
Seurat's partner in Neo-Impressionism, its theorist after Seurat died, and a sailor who painted harbours.
Paul Signac was born in Paris in 1863 and was largely self-taught, beginning as an admirer of Monet.
What a work by Paul Signac is worth
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Bio
Paul Signac was born in Paris in 1863 and was largely self-taught, beginning as an admirer of Monet. In 1884 he helped found the Société des Artistes Indépendants, where he met Georges Seurat, and the two developed the divisionist method of painting in separate touches of pure colour. After Seurat's death in 1891 Signac became the movement's chief advocate, and his book D'Eugène Delacroix au néo-impressionnisme, published in 1899, set out its theory. A keen sailor, he settled at Saint-Tropez in 1892 and painted the ports and coasts of France and Italy for the rest of his life. He was president of the Indépendants from 1908 until his death in 1935.
The pointillist oils of the late 1880s and 1890s are the heart of the market, with the broader, mosaic-like touch of the later paintings forming a larger field. Signac was also a prolific and fluent watercolourist, and the watercolours of harbours made on his travels are numerous and the most accessible part of the output; they are on paper, often over pencil, and fade in strong light. The catalogue raisonné of the paintings by Françoise Cachin, the artist's granddaughter, is the reference, and the Archives Signac are consulted on the watercolours and drawings.
The Indépendants, Matisse and Saint-Tropez
Signac showed at the first Salon des Indépendants in 1884 and at the last Impressionist exhibition in 1886, where the Neo-Impressionists first appeared together, and he exhibited with Les XX in Brussels. In the summer of 1904 Matisse stayed with him at Saint-Tropez and the following winter painted Luxe, calme et volupté in the divisionist manner.
His sailing took him along the coasts of Brittany and the Mediterranean, to Venice and in 1907 to Constantinople, and the watercolours from these journeys are dated and often inscribed with the place, which helps to identify them.
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