Comblat-le-Château, le Pré, Opus 161

Signac spent June and July of 1887 inland, in a village in the volcanic hills of the Cantal, which for a painter who organised his life around boats and harbours was out of character. The title carries a number, Opus 161, because he catalogued his canvases the way a composer numbers works. The borrowing from music was deliberate. He was close to the young theorist Charles Henry, who argued that lines and colours act on the nervous system in ways that could be measured, and a numbered catalogue helped make painting sound like the exact science that circle wanted it to be. A meadow in the Auvergne gets the same patient handling a harbour would. The Dallas Museum of Art bought the picture in 2010.