Paul Signac

Estimate

60,000 - 80,000 USD

bidding is closed

Description

Paul Signac
ÉTUDE POUR 'VENISE. MATIN' - RECTOÉTUDE POUR 'VENISE. SAINT-GEORGES' - VERSO
Signed P. Signac (recto, lower left); also signed P. Signac (verso, lower left)
Brush and ink and wash over pencil on paper (recto)
Watercolor, brush and ink and pastel over black crayon on paper (verso)
28 by 35 1/2 in.
71.2 by 90.2 cm

Provenance

Jan Hachette, Paris
Denise Soliac, Paris (by descent from the above in 1958)
By descent to the previous owner (circa 1970s)

Catalogue Note

Signac spent the spring of 1908 in Italy, visiting Florence, Siena and Rome before spending a month in Venice. It was during this stay that the present studies for two major canvases were executed. The recto is a study for Venise, Matin (Françoise Cachin, Signac, Catalogue raisonné de l'œuvre peint, Paris, 2000, no.468) and the verso for Venise, Saint-Georges (ibid., no. 469).

Signac's preparatory studies for large canvases were often made on a large scale so that their compositions could simply be squared off and transferred from watercolor to oil. Accordingly, the dimensions of the present work closely resemble those of eleven major oils Signac painted in his 1908 Venice series. In a small notebook in the James T. Dyke Collection, Arkansas, the artist dates the finished oil from which the recto of the present work is a study. Venise. Matin was completed in June 1908, one month after the artist had returned from Italy (see: Paul Signac, A Collection of Watercolors and Drawings (exhibition catalogue), The Arkansas Art Center, 2000, no. 36).