Mill of Edam

In 1896 Signac toured the Netherlands, and in Edam he filled sheets with watercolours. At the time the town stood on the Zuiderzee, a shallow arm of the North Sea that reached deep into the country. The dam that shut it off and turned it into the freshwater IJsselmeer was finished only in 1932. The canvas itself came later, in his studio at Saint-Tropez on the Mediterranean. Look to the right of the mill. Beside the old windmill stands a modern iron bascule bridge, the kind that lifts for passing boats, and the Museum Barberini points out how often the Neo-Impressionists set signs of new technology inside their landscapes like this. The sails are violet, the gallery around the mill is picked out in green, and a pale yellow sun glows in the haze. At the lower left he signed and dated it, P. Signac 96.