By Lola Gómez

About Le port de Rotterdam:

Title:

Le port de Rotterdam

Painter:

Paul Signac, Parijs 1863 - Parijs 1935

Year:

1907

Location:

This object is on view in room 26

Type of object:

painting

In 1906 Signac visited the port of Rotterdam and was greatly impressed. On a postcard with a harbour scene he wrote: 'From my window! What industriousness! I am enthusiastic, but amazed.' He made this painting the following year based on a drawing, which is also in the collection of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. The combination of the individual dabs of paint creates shimmering light effects.

 

About Paul Signac:

 

Paul Signac, born in Paris, was involved in founding the Société des Indépendants in 1884. This annual, non-jury exhibition offered admission to all artists, regardless of the style in which they worked. Here he met the pointillist painter Georges Seurat, who inspired him to apply the physical laws of light and colour in his painting. At the end of the 19th century, the pointillist round dots in Signac's work made way for an increasingly broader mosaic-like brush style. Signac's method of painting had a great influence on artists such as Henri Matisse and Kees van Dongen.