Port-en-Bessin, L'avant-port

In this luminous seascape painting of 1884, Signac recorded his impressions of the outer harbor of Port-en-Bessin. The scene is suffused with the golden afternoon sunlight, which casts a benevolent warmth over natural and manmade elements alike. The choppy, dappled surface of the deep blue water reflects a myriad of other colors: the pale rocks and velvety-green grass of the surrounding cliffs, the colorful houses nestled in the crevice of the valley, and the brilliant blue of the sky above.
Port-en-Bessin is a charming fishing village in the region of Normandy in northwestern France, situated along the English Channel. The coast there is defined by its modern quay, the concrete walls of which are visible in Port-en-Bessin, L'avant-port. The town is also notable for its cluster of historic domestic and commercial structures, which line the harbor. Signac first visited Port-en-Bessin in 1882, when he was just seventeen years old. The young artist would return the following summer, and again for a third time in 1884. That year, he executed a series of about a dozen paintings depicting the harbor, as well as the nearby beach—an example of which now belongs to Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid. Four years later, in the summer of 1888, the pointillist painter Georges Seurat would also visit this town, likely at Signac’s suggestion. There, Seurat painted at least six of his own distinctive views of the Port-en-Bessin.
Signac’s Port-en-Bessin, L'avant-port offers evidence of his early admiration for the Impressionist painters—notably Claude Monet, the son of Normandy who painted the coast in several different campaigns. In 1883, Signac attended an exhibition of Monet’s Varengeville and Pourville paintings series at the Galerie Durand-Ruel et Cie. in Paris; this experience undoubtedly influenced Signac’s own painterly approach. Signac’s close study and emulation of the loose, fluid Impressionist style is certainly evident in this painting. However, this work also anticipates the ways in which Signac would soon deviate from his Impressionist predecessors, as seen, for example, in the kaleidoscopic juxtaposition of distinct colors and the blocky, staccato brushstrokes that form the surface of the water.
1884 was a pivotal year for Signac and the evolution of his style. In July of that year, he participated in the first Salon des Artistes Indépendants, where he first met his future Neo-Impressionist compatriots, Seurat and Henri-Edmond Cross. As Port-en-Bessin, L’avant-port demonstrates, however, Signac had already begun to form his unique point of view; in the words of curator Marina Ferretti-Bocquillon, Signac’s “early production displays two characteristics that were to mark his work as a whole: a pronounced taste for frontal, geometric compositions with little perspectival depth and an unmistakable fondness for color” (Signac, exh. cat., Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2001, p. 85).
Port-en-Bessin, L’avant-port was first recorded in the collection of Lucie (née Brû) and Edmond Cousturier, who likely acquired the work directly from the artist. Lucie, a writer and painter, and Edmond, an art critic, owned several paintings by Signac, including Vue de la Seine, Herblay (1889, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston). Lucie maintained a very close personal relationship with the artist; she first began to study painting under the Signac in the 1890s and early 1900s. Through Signac, Lucie also developed relationships with Cross and Seurat. The latter’s monumental masterpiece, Un dimanche d'été à l'Ile de La Grande Jatte (1884-1886, Art Institute of Chicago), hung in Lucie’s studio for over twenty years, until she sold the painting to private collectors in Chicago in 1924. Lucie’s own paintings bore a strong stylistic resemblance to the divisionist canvases of Signac, Cross and Seurat, and she too regularly exhibited her work at the annual Salon des Artistes Indépendants in Paris. Lucie later turned her attention from painting to writing. In 1922, she published the first monograph dedicated to Signac, which has become a primary source for scholars. She also wrote extensively about her travels in West Africa, until her premature death in 1925. Port-en-Bessin, L’avant-port subsequently changed hands several times over the course of the twentieth century, until it was acquired by the late owners in 1990.