Paul Signac painting,the port at sunset Saint-Tropez and TARTANE
Posted: Tue Jan 14, 2025 10:09 pm
In 1892 Paul Signac transferred his yacht Olympia to Saint-Tropez, still an unassumung fishing village at the time, where he bought a house on the coast. He painted this composition there that same year. The application of the complementary colors violet and orange in tiny dots cause the picture to vibrate. Light is no longer featured as an atmosphere that surrounds an object, but instead as stimulating particles.
After the death of Georges Seurat in the spring of 1891, Paul Signac and Henri-Edmond Cross became the figureheads of the Neo-Impressionist movement he had founded. In the early 1890s, the two painters moved from Paris to the French Riviera, where Signac settled in the fishing village of Saint-Tropez in 1892. The artists were close friends and enjoyed lively exchange and mutual influence as they continued to develop the Pointillist visual language. Like many of their Neo-Impressionist colleagues, they sympathized with anarchism, which sought to liberate the individual from social and governmental coercion. For both painters, the South of France and the beauty of the Riviera, unsullied by industrialization, functioned as a metaphor for the ideal of the anarchistic social utopia they were seeking to express in their depictions of nature.
Sun-drenched images of the coast and sea played a prominent role in the work of both artists during the 1890s. The Port at Sunset, Opus 236 (Saint-Tropez) is one of Signac’s first Pointillist works after his discovery of the French Riviera, and stylistically it is still indebted to Seurat. Along the harbor, both sea and sky appear golden in the light of the setting sun, contrasting with pictorial elements rendered in shades of blue and violet. The triangle formed by the landing stage in the foreground is echoed in the exaggerated contours of the boat sail. The cast shadows on the gently rippling water lead the viewer’s gaze toward the ship, lending depth and volume to the middle ground. The solemn evening mood and impression of utter stillness intensify the dreamy character so typical of Signac’s images of Saint-Tropez. Compositionally, the piece is closely related to his painting Evening Calm, Concarneau from the previous year, now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
In the catalogue raisonné of Signac’s paintings compiled by Françoise Cachin and Marina Ferretti-Bocquillon, The Port at Sunset, Opus 236 (Saint-Tropez) is listed as no. 229. The subtitle “Opus 236” corresponds to the ongoing sequence of opus numbers with which Signac titled his pieces from 1887 to 1894, evoking the musical rhythms and clearly articulated harmonies that inspired his art.
Daniel Zamani
https://sammlung.museum-barberini.de/en ... int-tropez
The vessel in the foreground is a”tartane” of which wikipedia gives:
The tartane is a sailing boat characteristic of the Mediterranean. The name is said to have originated from the Arabic word taridah meaning "vessel" . Used for all purposes, the tartane sailed everywhere and more generally in the western basin . A popular freight carrier, it only disappeared in the first quarter of the 20 century .
In Provence, tartanes are used for fishing, but also for transporting tiles and "malons" , especially between l'Estaque (the tile factories of Saint-Henri) and the Old Port of Marseille . They are also used in Italy and North Africa.
The tartane is a Latin building with one mast set straight in the middle of the hull . It is generally pible (made of a single piece), carrying a Latin sail called "mestre" and a jib called "polacre". Until the middle of the 18 century , however, tartanes with two masts with a very forward inclined staysail can be seen . The model then disappears, giving way to the "navicello" .
The hull of the tartane is very round and pointed at both ends, the sail, with a single mast, requires few people and the whole corresponds to an economic reference model, hence its longevity . The average dimensions of a tartane are 14 to 25 m long (for the largest) by 5.5 to 6 m wide. These large tartanes weigh 100 tons according to Commander Hennique who observed them in large numbers on the Tunisian coasts around 1880 .
The longevity of the ship allows us to observe the latest developments in lateen rigging up to the beginning of the 20th century, to get rid of the conditions imposed by their large mast (more than 20 m on the largest), some units received a square rigging with two levels of sails and a pible, the mizzen sometimes remaining lateen. The Italians called martingana the tartanes with square sails that they armed at this time .
Tartans disappeared shortly after the First World War with the generalization of road and rail transport. There is currently only one tartane in seaworthy condition: La Flâneuse , launched in 1991 and which can be seen at the Port du Prado in Marseille.
Jean Jouve in the album "Drawings of all their ships which Navigate south of the Mediterranean" from 1679, shows these four images of Tartanes of a single mast: and two images of tartans with two masts:
François-Edmond Pâris in the album "Souvenirs de marine préservés, ou Collection de plans de navire de guerre et de commerce et de bateaux divers de tous leurs pays drawn by leur constructeurs ou marins" from 1879 shows three plans of typical Tartanes: 1 Tartans in images of his time 3 3 4 1
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tartane_(bateau) (Google translate)
France 2025 no value sg?, Sott?
After the death of Georges Seurat in the spring of 1891, Paul Signac and Henri-Edmond Cross became the figureheads of the Neo-Impressionist movement he had founded. In the early 1890s, the two painters moved from Paris to the French Riviera, where Signac settled in the fishing village of Saint-Tropez in 1892. The artists were close friends and enjoyed lively exchange and mutual influence as they continued to develop the Pointillist visual language. Like many of their Neo-Impressionist colleagues, they sympathized with anarchism, which sought to liberate the individual from social and governmental coercion. For both painters, the South of France and the beauty of the Riviera, unsullied by industrialization, functioned as a metaphor for the ideal of the anarchistic social utopia they were seeking to express in their depictions of nature.
Sun-drenched images of the coast and sea played a prominent role in the work of both artists during the 1890s. The Port at Sunset, Opus 236 (Saint-Tropez) is one of Signac’s first Pointillist works after his discovery of the French Riviera, and stylistically it is still indebted to Seurat. Along the harbor, both sea and sky appear golden in the light of the setting sun, contrasting with pictorial elements rendered in shades of blue and violet. The triangle formed by the landing stage in the foreground is echoed in the exaggerated contours of the boat sail. The cast shadows on the gently rippling water lead the viewer’s gaze toward the ship, lending depth and volume to the middle ground. The solemn evening mood and impression of utter stillness intensify the dreamy character so typical of Signac’s images of Saint-Tropez. Compositionally, the piece is closely related to his painting Evening Calm, Concarneau from the previous year, now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
In the catalogue raisonné of Signac’s paintings compiled by Françoise Cachin and Marina Ferretti-Bocquillon, The Port at Sunset, Opus 236 (Saint-Tropez) is listed as no. 229. The subtitle “Opus 236” corresponds to the ongoing sequence of opus numbers with which Signac titled his pieces from 1887 to 1894, evoking the musical rhythms and clearly articulated harmonies that inspired his art.
Daniel Zamani
https://sammlung.museum-barberini.de/en ... int-tropez
The vessel in the foreground is a”tartane” of which wikipedia gives:
The tartane is a sailing boat characteristic of the Mediterranean. The name is said to have originated from the Arabic word taridah meaning "vessel" . Used for all purposes, the tartane sailed everywhere and more generally in the western basin . A popular freight carrier, it only disappeared in the first quarter of the 20 century .
In Provence, tartanes are used for fishing, but also for transporting tiles and "malons" , especially between l'Estaque (the tile factories of Saint-Henri) and the Old Port of Marseille . They are also used in Italy and North Africa.
The tartane is a Latin building with one mast set straight in the middle of the hull . It is generally pible (made of a single piece), carrying a Latin sail called "mestre" and a jib called "polacre". Until the middle of the 18 century , however, tartanes with two masts with a very forward inclined staysail can be seen . The model then disappears, giving way to the "navicello" .
The hull of the tartane is very round and pointed at both ends, the sail, with a single mast, requires few people and the whole corresponds to an economic reference model, hence its longevity . The average dimensions of a tartane are 14 to 25 m long (for the largest) by 5.5 to 6 m wide. These large tartanes weigh 100 tons according to Commander Hennique who observed them in large numbers on the Tunisian coasts around 1880 .
The longevity of the ship allows us to observe the latest developments in lateen rigging up to the beginning of the 20th century, to get rid of the conditions imposed by their large mast (more than 20 m on the largest), some units received a square rigging with two levels of sails and a pible, the mizzen sometimes remaining lateen. The Italians called martingana the tartanes with square sails that they armed at this time .
Tartans disappeared shortly after the First World War with the generalization of road and rail transport. There is currently only one tartane in seaworthy condition: La Flâneuse , launched in 1991 and which can be seen at the Port du Prado in Marseille.
Jean Jouve in the album "Drawings of all their ships which Navigate south of the Mediterranean" from 1679, shows these four images of Tartanes of a single mast: and two images of tartans with two masts:
François-Edmond Pâris in the album "Souvenirs de marine préservés, ou Collection de plans de navire de guerre et de commerce et de bateaux divers de tous leurs pays drawn by leur constructeurs ou marins" from 1879 shows three plans of typical Tartanes: 1 Tartans in images of his time 3 3 4 1
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tartane_(bateau) (Google translate)
France 2025 no value sg?, Sott?