Paul Signac

Bernheim-Jeune, Paris (acquired in October 1907)
B. Chavenon (acquired in December 1916)
Dernys, Paris
Charon, Paris
Bellier, Paris (1927)
Wormser Bank, Paris
Galerie Hopkins-Thomas, Paris (1987)
Dr Steven Cooperman, Los Angeles (sold: Sotheby's, New York, 9th May 1989, lot 26)
Private Collection, New York (purchased at the above sale. Sold: Christie's, New York, 18th November 1998, lot 30)
Purchased at the above sale by the previous owner

The Artist's Handlist (Cahier manuscrit), listed as La corne d'Or. La Suleimanie
Gaston Lévy, 'Pré-catalogue', circa 1932, illustrated p. 381bis
Françoise Cachin, Signac. Catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre peint, Paris, 2000, no. 450, illustrated p. 282

The canvas is unlined and there is no evidence of retouching under ultra-violet light. Apart from some very minor stable craquelure in the sky, this work is in very good original condition. Colours: In comparison with the printed catalogue illustration, the colours are overall fairly accurate, although slightly fresher and richer in the original.
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La Corne d'or. La Suleimanie was inspired by Signac's visit to Istanbul (fig. 1), at the time still named Constantinople, in the spring of 1907. It depicts a view of the Golden Horn, with the famous Süleymaniye Mosque rising majestically over the Bosporus. Signac left for Constantinople from Marseille at the end of March, accompanied by his friend, the painter Henri Person, and stayed until mid-May, producing a large number of watercolours. All of Signac's recorded 1907 oils of Constantinople depict the view of the Golden Horn, the combination of shimmering water and oriental architecture clearly having fascinated the artist. The present work shows the city-scape at dusk, with the deep blue and green tones of the sailboat and the sea contrasting with the pink tones of the setting sun washing over the buildings.

 

As in his other paintings of the Ottoman capital (fig. 2), the foreground of the present work is dominated by the passing ships, depicted in opulent colours. With a dazzling palette that characterised the later decades of his artistic career, Signac pays homage to the historical richness and significance of this port while bringing a fresh vivacity to its portrayal. The Süleymaniye Mosque, the second largest mosque in the city, towers in the centre of Istanbul's highest hill. It was completed in 1557 and set the pattern for mosque-building for the next 200 years and continues to dominate the Istanbul skyline until today. During the reign of Sultan Süleyman I (1520-66) the city became a true imperial centre synonymous with grandeur.

 

While this view of Constantinople was painted in 1907, Signac had begun travelling extensively throughout Europe by 1904, visiting major ports such as Venice, Rotterdam and London. Unlike Monet, whose restless travels were occasioned by the search for new visual stimuli, Signac's travels were to a certain extent programmatic in intent. As Marina Ferretti-Bocquillon observed: 'At the turn of the century, Signac's paintings tended toward a decorative classicism, manifested by broad, well-considered and balanced compositions. His project for a series of views of famous ports, inspired by a similar series by Joseph Vernet, was realized in unusually large-scale pictures [...] Conscious of working within a historic tradition, Signac no longer proclaimed a modernity justified by science but alluded to his predecessors, great marine painters like Turner and Claude Lorrain who celebrated light' (M. Ferretti-Bocquillon, in Signac (exhibition catalogue), Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, Paris; Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam & The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2001, p. 225).

 

By the time he painted the present work, Signac had developed his pointillist technique so that his dabs of paint had become much larger than the more tightly spaced dots of his earlier compositions. The overall chromatic impact of these pictures was more like that of a tiled mosaic, and the individualised colour patches held an expressiveness and freedom that he shared with the Fauves. Describing a composition painted in St. Tropez around this time, Signac explained how he had become less reliant upon the observation of nature and more inclined to paint from his imagination: 'For this landscape, I act as I would for a large studio painting, fixing in advance my subject and my composition, and then going out to find in nature the necessary information. I am very happy with this method, and I will no longer use any other. In working here [St. Tropez] I see what little importance and what little use that working directly after nature has [...] I am sure that the man who is really strong can make everything come entirely out of his head' (quoted in Neo Impressionism (exhibition catalogue), The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1968, p. 143). 

 

 

 

Fig. 1, A view of Istanbul, photographed by Robert Capa

Fig. 2, Paul Signac, La Corne d'or. Matin, 1907, oil on canvas Musée des Beaux-Arts, Marseille