The Barge at Samois

A barge floating in a film of translucent colour, beautifully denoted through Paul Signac’s mosaic-like strokes – this painting speaks volumes of the artist’s signature style.

It was through his friendship with neo-impressionist Georges Seurat that Signac developed his divisionist technique, which bestows a glittering luminosity to his works through the juxtaposing pure, unblended colours, applied in individual brushstrokes.

When working on this canvas in 1901 Signac was at the height of his powers, having published the key theoretical text on the principles of neo-impressionism just three years previously (d'Eugène Delacroix au Néo-Impressionnisme). The water around the barge, evoked through beautifully paired complementary colours – orange and blue, yellow and mauve – underlines the movement’s reliance on contemporary colour theories.

But if The Barge at Samois has pride of place within the Gallery’s collection, we know from its provenance that it has, over the decades, been in the possession of illustrious collectors and passionate art enthusiasts. Initially, it was in the hands of Count Harry Kessler (1868–1937), German aristocrat, aesthete and Francophile, whose collection helped introduced neo-impressionism to German art lovers and artists. Later on, the painting became the property of Gaston Lévy (1893–1977), co-founder of the Monoprix store chain and a great lover of modern art, who provided Signac with a somewhat unique commission: an ambitious project to depict all the ports of France in a series of watercolours which, though impeded by the sponsor’s financial difficulties during the economic crisis of 1930, largely dominated the final years of Signac’s career.