Venise, San Giorgio et la Salute

Details

With a photo expertise by Marina Ferretti, Paris, dated 29.4.2021.

Provenance:

Rudolf Tewes Collection (1879-1965), Bremen;

Private collection, Caracas, acquired from the aforementioned in the 1950s;

Private collection, Bavaria, by inheritance to the present owner.

Descrizione

Venice exerted a special fascination on Paul Signac. This interest was intensified by his reading of John Ruskin’s work on Venetian art and architecture, “The Stones of Venice”. Ruskin’s writings were very much in vogue at the turn of the century and Signac shared many of Ruskin’s social and aesthetic ideas. His stay in Venice in 1904 proved to be extremely fruitful – in just one month he produced over two hundred watercolour sketches. He often added numbers to his watercolours. The present sheet bears the remains of a number in the lower right corner (“18…”).

Like Turner, Signac left behind a visual diary, as it were, in which he tirelessly recorded his impressions of the Venetian light, atmosphere and colours in drawings and watercolour sketches.