Brume rose. Isola di San Giorgio (Venise) is a dreamy, jewel-like rendition by Signac of the timeless city that has served as an inspiration for countless generations of painters throughout art history. Painted in 1904, following the artist’s first visit to the city, the work perfectly encapsulates the evolution of Signac’s style from a science-driven, emotionally restrained early Neo-Impressionist style towards an approach that John Leighton has described as, ‘rich, luxuriant, and sensual’ (J. Leighton, ‘Out of Seurat’s Shadow: Signac, 1863-1935, An Introduction’, in Signac (exhibition catalogue), New York, 2001, p. 19).
Signac arrived in Venice on 27th March 1904 and settled at Casa Petrarca on the Riva degli Schiavoni. Henri-Edmond Cross, Signac’s close friend and fellow proponent of Neo-Impressionism, who had stayed in Venice just a few months earlier (fig. 1) commended him on his choice of lodging: ‘You are superbly well placed to enjoy the endlessly changing skies and water which, for the imagination of a colourist like you, will inspire precious harmonies’ (quoted in ibid., p. 233). As Marina Ferretti-Bocquillon remarks, ‘the City of Doges had everything to offer the avid museum-goer Signac had become in search for new subject matter. He visited an impressive number of churches and museums, always delighted when he found in the masterpieces of the past traces of an instinctive use of the principles of colour division and contrast. Between museum visits he enjoyed the spectacle of the city and executed a large number of watercolours. Upon his return he announced that he had brought back “more than two hundred informal watercolour sketches”, which he used to paint his first Venetian series’ (quoted in ibid., pp. 233-234).
Right: Fig. 3, Paul Signac, Voiles dans la brume. Canal de la Guidecca, 1904, oil on canvas. Sold at Sotheby’s, London, February 2016, for £1,025,000
Observing Venice from the water, Signac rendered its skies, waters and architectural sights in all their spectacular grandeur and a wide array of weather and atmospheric effects (figs. 2 and 3). In contrast to the rigid, tightly spaced dots that had defined his earlier compositions, by 1904 Signac had adopted larger, freer dabs of paint that brought his work closer to that of the Impressionists. Leighton notes that by reducing his emphasis on precision and embracing the expressive nature of paint, Signac ‘emphasised that the painter was a poet and a creator, not a scientist’ (quoted in ibid., p. 10). This could not be more evident in the present enigmatic composition, where the silhouettes of the buildings and sails gradually emerge from the mist as one concentrates on them, only to fade away and dissolve into the background like a mirage, once the viewer’s focus has shifted to other elements of the composition. In turn, the water exudes a subtle shimmer through Signac’s masterful, mosaic-like application of white, dark green, purple and pale pink hues.
Venice served as a source of inspiration for Signac once again following his second visit to the city in 1908 – coincidentally the same year Claude Monet travelled to Venice and executed his own series of canvases, including several which, like the present work, depict the San Giorgio Maggiore island as observed across the expanse of the Grand Canal (fig. 4). Having viewed them at Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Signac wrote to the ‘dear Master’ whose work he valued immensely to convey his impressions: ‘I experienced before your Venices, before the superb interpretation of those motifs that I know so well, an emotion as perfect, as powerful as the one I felt around 1879 in the exhibition gallery of the Vie moderne, in front of your Railroad Stations, your Paved Roads, your Flowering Trees, an emotion that decided my career’ (quoted in ibid., p. 71).
Together with several other views of Venice, Signac exhibited Brume rose. Isola di San Giorgio (Venise) at Galerie Druet in 1904 and at the 1905 Salon des Indépendants. The series was greatly admired by the critics and general public and received very positive reviews, including one from the critic Louis Vauxcelles who wrote at the time: 'nothing is more vibrant, more atmospheric, than the shimmering Venice of M. Signac' (L. Vauxcelles, ‘Le Salon des Indépendants’, in Gil Blas, 20th March 1906, p. 2).
