Brief Report

This painting of the harbour at Concarneau, painted in 1933 two years before the artist’s death, bears witness to Signac’s lifelong passion for sailing boats (fig. 1). Dashes on the left-hand turnover edge and numerous pricks within the blue margin of the picture suggest that Signac used a grid, which we can no longer reconstruct, in order to transfer the composition from a picture previously executed in a different medium (fig. 7). One possibility would be an India-ink drawing in unknown private possession mentioned in the catalogue raisonné [Cachin/ Ferretti-Bocquillon 2000, p. 340], in the same format as, and closely related to, the present work. The individual forms of the depiction were first outlined in black pencil, and then enhanced as dotted lines in blue paint applied with a brush (fig. 8). Only then was a coat of pure white paint applied, which comes across as streaky in many places; an attempt was made not to obscure the blue lines. To all appearances, Signac applied this white paint layer out of dissatisfaction with the off-white ground of the pre-primed canvas (figs 5, 9, 10). The painting itself is dominated by short brushstrokes applied in various directions. While the horizontal brushstrokes used for the sky consist largely of blue tones lightened with white, the horizontal brushstrokes used for the reflections of the boats and sails in the water are generally more intensive and colourful (fig. 11). Signac used luminous, sometimes pure pigments for the hulls and sails of the boats. The consistency of the paints varies here from thin and semitransparent via opaque to impasto (fig. 12). In a final stage, Signac edged some of the vertical and diagonal brushstrokes in blue paint (fig. 11). In the same way, he enhanced the individual blue outlines of the first, drawn, lay-in.

Paul Signac
The Harbour of Concarneau, 1933, oil on canvas, 53.0 x 73.5 cm, WRM Dep. FC 656

Paul Signac

born on 11 November 1863 in Paris,
died on 15 August 1935 ibidem

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Further illustrations:

Fig. 02

Verso


Fig. 03

Raking light


Fig. 04

UV fluorescence


Fig. 05

Detail, signature and right-hand edge of picture with blue outline of the painted area


Fig. 06

Detail, dealer’s stamp on canvas verso


Fig. 07

Detail, left-hand turnover edge, which extends to the rear of the stretcher and shows black markings in the form of dashes


Fig. 08

Blue brush lines to lay in the composition, microscopic photograph (M = 1 mm)


Fig. 09

Brush outline in blue over black pencil line at the left-hand edge of the picture, to the left the commercially pre-primed canvas is visible, to the right the streaky purewhite paint layer which
functioned as a second ground, microscopic photograph (M = 1 mm)


Fig. 10

Detail, blue outline at the right-hand edge of the picture with visible prick hole below the line


Fig. 11

Detail, variety of colour in the region of the ships’ hulls and sails, blue outlines reinforcing the cell-structure of the individual brushstrokes


Fig. 12

Detail, the surface of the painting is characterized by an alternation of smooth and impasto paint applications (raking light)