Vista del puerto, Saint-Briac

Signac was 22 in the summer of 1885 and spent it at Saint-Briac, a fishing village on the Breton coast near Saint-Malo that he went back to season after season. This is what he brought home from that year, and it went into the Paris exhibition of 1886, the eighth and last of the Impressionist shows, where Monet, Renoir and Sisley all stayed away and the room everyone argued about was given to the newcomers. The harbour here is still painted in loose strokes. The colour is the part that points forward. Green and purple sit inside the blue of the water, laid alongside each other instead of blended on the palette. The museum in Rotterdam bought the canvas in 1936.