Banks of river Seine at Herblay

Banks of the River Seine at Herblay (1889) was painted at Herblay-sur-Seine, one of the Seine-side villages north of Paris where Signac made plein-air studies during the late 1880s. The work is contemporaneous with his Sunset, Herblay (Opus 206) and belongs to a sustained campaign along this stretch of river. By 1889 Signac's technique was fully mature, and Herblay's quiet riverside landscape gave him ideal conditions for systematic divisionist study without the more complex compositional demands of harbour subjects. Musée d'Orsay.

The riverbank's vegetation and water are rendered in mature systematic divisionism, with the Seine's reflective surface carrying a cooler divisionist treatment of the warm foliage and sky above. The composition is understated and horizontal, maximising the field available for the demonstration of optical colour mixing.