Rotterdam, the mill, the canal, the morning

In 1906 Rotterdam was one of the busiest ports in Europe, a city dredging and rebuilding itself for the new century. Signac spent part of that year there, sketching the river and the streets, and this canvas he worked up later in the studio from those drawings. Its subject is almost quaint for such a place: a wooden windmill called De Hoop, standing over a canal in the middle of town in the first light of morning. He painted it in his late manner, in small squared touches of pure colour set side by side like mosaic, so that the water and sky shimmer while the eye does the mixing. The canal was the Coolsingel, and it did not survive the city's rebuilding. By 1913 the mill had been condemned and taken down to make way for a new road through the centre of Rotterdam.