Paul Signac

Jules Koch, Alsace, director of the Société Alsacienne de Constructions Mécaniques; acquired as a gift in 1924 for fifty years of service
Marcel Koch, Strasbourg, by descent from the above, from whom confiscated by the Geheime Feldpolizei (Secret Military Police) in Moutaine, Jura, in 1940
Presented to the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra by Feldpolizeidirektor Roman Loos in September 1940 in thanks for a concert given in Salins-les-Bains
Restituted to the legal heirs of Marcel Koch by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra in 2016
Acquired from the above by the present owner

This work is in excellent condition. The canvas is unlined. The canvas is slightly buckling in the upper right hand corner. The surface is slightly dirty overall. Under UV light: some original pigments fluoresce, but no inpainting is apparent.
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Painted when Signac was only twenty-one, the present work depicts the small French coastal town of Port-en-Bessin, situated in the Calvados department of Normandy. It was here that Signac spent some of the most formative months of his artistic development capturing the combination of sea and sky that Port-en-Bessin afforded him.

These early seascapes of the port town constituted a theme that Signac would pursue in Saint-Tropez, Antibes and Collioure, among many other locations. Signac was an avid sailor, owning dozens of boats in his lifetime. Fellow painter Théo van Rysselberghe eventually became a partner in both artistic and maritime endeavors, and the two artists often sailed together on Signac’s cutter Olympia, named for Manet’s masterpiece. Writing about one particular excursion, van Rysselberghe declared "I leave tomorrow for the south coast—with Pierre Olin—He will leave me in Bordeaux and Signac will join me. And then: the Canal du Midi: Montauban, Carcassonne, Toulouse etc, then Sète, Marseille, Toulon and off to sea! Ah, it's going to be really topping! (quoted in Théo van Rysselberghe (exhibition catalogue), Centre for Fine Arts, Den Haag, Gemeentemuseum, Brussels, 2006, p. 135).

Although he trained briefly in the studio of Emile Pin, Signac was largely self-taught. While his style would evolve toward his highly-influential practice of Pointillism, as a youth Signac was devoted to the impressionist movement, particularly to the work of Claude Monet. Indeed, the same year he painted the present work, he attended an exhibition of Monet’s canvases at Galerie Durand-Ruel. While Signac would ultimately apply groundbreaking theories of color with his pointillist technique, Port-en-Bessin, le trois-mâts à quai reveals his earliest artistic endeavors and proclivity for the impressionist style.