Venezia, la vela gialla

Signac was a passionate sailor as well as a painter, and in the spring of 1904 he took himself to Venice, a city made for a man who loved boats and light on water. He came home with sketches and watercolours and worked them up into finished canvases like this one back in his Paris studio. By then Signac was the chief keeper of the method his late friend Seurat had invented, building a picture from small separate strokes of pure colour set side by side like tiles in a mosaic. Here the lagoon dissolves into soft pinks, lilacs and greens, with a single warm yellow sail catching the sun at the centre. He worked it up from memory and notes, months after he had left the water it describes.