Étude pour 'Le temps d'harmonie'

Au Temps d'Harmonie (In the Age of Harmony) was Signac's most ambitious programmatic painting — a large-format (300 x 400 cm) anarchist utopia set in a Mediterranean landscape. This study is one of the preparatory works for the 1893-95 campaign that produced the finished canvas, now in the Mairie de Montreuil. Signac was a committed anarchist, and the painting depicted his vision of a harmonious future society: men and women at leisure in an ideal coastal landscape, liberated from labor. The studies for the project show him working through the figure groupings and landscape elements in divisionist color before committing to the large canvas.

The study employs looser, more exploratory divisionist marks than the finished version — testing color relationships and compositional ideas before the systematic application required by the large final canvas. Warm Mediterranean light saturates the scene with yellows and oranges modulated by the cooler blues and greens of sea and shadow.