The Green Sail

The boat in the middle is a working vessel of the Venetian lagoon, and its sail carries the kind of decoration the fishermen there painted by hand: stars, crosses, animals or initials that let a family's boat be recognised from far off. Here Signac gave it a red star and a round red emblem on a field of green. Behind it, on the left, rise the bell tower and dome of San Giorgio Maggiore, the island church across the water from St Mark's Square. Gondolas cross the foreground between wooden mooring posts. Signac painted it in 1904, the year of his first visit to Venice. In 1908 he sent it to Brussels, to the jubilee exhibition of La Libre Esthétique, the city's avant-garde exhibition society. By 1976 it belonged to his daughter Ginette, who gave it to the French state that year while keeping the use of it for her lifetime.