Der Hafen von Marseille

Marseille's harbour was one of Paul Signac's favourite subjects, and he returned to it across his whole career. He painted this version in 1907, working in the pointillist method he had inherited from Georges Seurat and then made his own, laying down small separate touches of pure colour that the eye is meant to blend from a distance. Up close the water is a mosaic of blues, greens, and pinks. Signac was also a keen sailor who kept boats of his own, and he watched ports with a practised eye for masts, rigging, and the light coming off the water. By this date he had loosened Seurat's tiny scientific dots into broader, mosaic-like blocks. The whole scene shimmers in the flat Mediterranean sun, the boats sitting quietly at their moorings.