Signac and His Friends in the Sailing Boat

The bearded, narrow face of the helmsman shows the features of the painter Paul Signac (1863-1935). Bonnard gave the figure on the right of the picture the features of Jos Hessel, the first owner of the painting. The female figure could be Berthe, Signac's first wife. Photographs of such a sailing party are in Signac's archives and are very close to Bonnard's pictorial composition (see fig. 5-7 in Bonnard (exh. cat. Zürich 1984/85), p. 56 f.). On one of them the chicken in the foreground is also visible.
The painterly appearance points to an execution around 1924; after Dauberville, the painting was begun around 1914.