Paul Signac (1863-1935)

Signac spent the summer of 1885 in Saint-Briac, a Breton town situated on a long inlet that opened onto the English Channel. Signac takes advantage of the configuration of the bay to show expanses of water bounded by shorelines both in the foreground and on the horizon.

Signac began to paint in 1881 and was largely self-taught. The chief influence on his work at the time of the present painting was Armand Guillaumin. Signac met Guillaumin in Paris in 1884, around the time of the first Salon des Artistes Indépendants in May, to which Signac had contributed a painting. He later recalled, "the painter I admired most when I was twenty was Guillaumin. One day I was painting on the quays of the Ile Saint-Louis. A man who was looking at my canvas over my shoulder suddenly said to me: 'That's not bad! I do some painting myself...my name is Guillaumin'" (quoted in M. Ferretti-Bocquillon, et al., Signac, exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2001, p. 299). It was during the Salon that Signac met the artist who would ultimately have a far greater and lasting impact on his painting: Georges Seurat. Together with Henri-Edmond Cross and Albert Dubois-Pillet, they formed in July 1884 the Société des Artistes Indépendants, the group which would become the center of the Neo-Impressionist movement.