Paul Signac 1863 – 1935
Charcoal, watercolour and traces of bodycolour on paper 202 x 278 mm
Bequeathed by Frank Hindley Smith, 1939
Collections record: 2413
© The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
An enthusiastic sailor, Signac was familiar with much of the French coastline, and, from the late 1880s, many of his paintings and watercolours depict ports and vessels in full sail or at anchor.
He was largely self-taught as a painter in oils and went on to develop a highly personal watercolour style, based on Pissarro’s initial advice, and on the example of his three touchstones, the ‘idealist’ Turner, ‘the realist’, Jongkind and ‘the analyst’, Cézanne.
