Signac first met Seurat in 1884 at the inaugural Salon des Indépendants. Their meeting would prove a watershed moment for the young artist who, under the mentorship of the elder Seurat and alongside Cross, would soon come to define a wholly innovative style of painting. Just two years later at the second Salon des Indépendants, the term ‘Neo-Impressionism’ was coined to describe the luminous and exacting compositions from this group of artists.
“[Signac] tells us the most powerful and delicate secrets of his inebriation before nature, his love for the wonders filling the sky and earth.”
Based in the color theories of the chemist Eugène Chevreul, the Neo-Impressionists’ compositions played on the notion of “simultaneous contrast,” the concept that adjacent colors impact the perception of the surrounding colors. With this in mind, Signac and his fellow Neo-Impressionists utilized tiny dots and strokes of contrasting pigment to create an enhanced effect of luminosity in their work. Signac and Seurat were at the fore of the movement, championing their innovative style of painting in the face of critics and a reactionary public. After Seurat’s untimely death in 1891, however, Signac was left to pick up the mantle and define the movement going forward.
Not long after the tragic death of his friend, Signac first sailed southward to Saint-Tropez in search of lighter, happier times. As soon as he arrived in the port city, Signac was taken by the landscape and coastline, from the boats that dotted the shore to the terracotta-roofed houses and enchanting terrain along the hillsides (see figs. 1 and 2). He would return to the Riviera city throughout his life, including his summer sojourn in 1904.
Painted during this stay, Le Cabanon (Saint-Tropez) is a rare scene among the artist’s oeuvre. Instead of the vast coastlines and coterie of ships so often depicted in his work from this period, the present work captures a quiet cottage nestled in the lush hills of the region. The vibrant light of Le Midi radiates through the composition, heightened by the artist’s divisionist techniques and the purposeful spacing of brushstrokes. By leaving slight interstices between each tache of contrasting color, the entire scene takes on an augmented luminosity from the primed canvas below.
As John House details, “After c. 1900 Signac adopted a larger brushstroke, and began to work in mosaic-like blocks of paint, placed separately on the white-primed canvas, and sometimes at an angle to suggest directional movement. The priming is often left visible around the touches [which] give the painting a luminosity, alongside the richness of its colour” (J. House in Exh. Cat., London, Royal Academy of Art, Post-Impressionism: Cross-Currents in European Painting, 1979-80, p. 140).
Signac’s revolutionary technique suffuses the pastoral scene, seemingly rendering each leaf, tree trunk and blade of grass into a vibrating, shimmering surface. Two figures at right collect fruit from the yellow tree, the composition otherwise devoted to the glory of nature and the small man-made edifice at center.
The year 1904 also marked a crucial turning point for Post-Impressionist development. At Signac’s invitation, Matisse traveled to Saint-Tropez for the summer and stayed at La Ramade, a petit cottage above the Plage des Graniers, probably much like the one pictured in Le Cabanon (Saint-Tropez). It was on this trip the Matisse that would attempt to incorporate the Neo-Impressionist style into his own work. Though few compositions were rendered in the divioinist technique, Matisse found the sublime scenery a powerful force and influenced a wealth of proto-Fauve canvases while there (see fig. 3).
Given the disciplined nature of the divisionist technique, Signac often created quick sketches in oil or watercolor en plein air in order to capture the fleeting effects of the light and the nuances of the terrain. Later referencing such sketches in his studio, Signac would then systematically execute the final, perfected version on a larger scale in oil. One study for the present work is held in the collection of the Pushkin Museum (see fig. 4). Painted a year prior, Le Cabanon (étude) hints at the small red-roofed cottage and the cheerful pink-blossomed tree of the present work.
An exquisite work from one of the artist’s favorite locations, Le Cabanon (Saint-Tropez) has been exhibited across Europe and was on long-term loan to the Museum of Fine Arts Boston for more than 20 years. It comes to auction for the first time in nearly three decades.
