Le Pont des Arts

Signac was especially concerned with intensifiying the quantity of light in his paintings and imbuing his compositions, usually landscapes, with the pure harmony of color. In Le Pont des Arts (The Pont des Arts), he painted the view of the Île de la Cité from the right bank of the Seine like a classic veduta—featuring the Palais de Justice, Sainte-Chapelle, Notre-Dame, Pont Neuf, and Pont des Arts—a motif Signac frequently varied in 1912. The palette used in these paintings have gradations from light to dark blue and sometimes green as well, accentuated by a bit of yellow and dark red. Short, forceful, closely set strokes of the brush reveal the systematic fragmentation of color. Even more decisively than the generation of Impressionists preceding him, Paul Signac assumed that the vibrant impression of light and color would once again densify in the eye of the beholder, as is the case when experiencing nature. The artist translated most consistently his theoretical musings into the medium of painting.