Порт Роттердама

Signac came to Rotterdam in 1906 and was overwhelmed by the working harbour. On a postcard home he wrote that he was amazed at all the industry, watching it from his window over the river Maas. Back in his studio down in Saint-Tropez, on the Mediterranean, he worked the drawings up into this painting the next year. Signac was one of the inventors of Pointillism, laying pure colour down in separate small touches that the eye blends at a distance into a shimmering light. Here the method turns coal smoke, steam and grey northern water into something almost festive, a mosaic of warm and cool dots. He kept the drawing he had made from that Rotterdam window, and it sits today in the same museum as the finished canvas.