Les Andelys

Les Andelys (1886) is one of Signac's most significant early mature works, painted at the Norman Seine town the same year as the decisive 1886 Impressionist exhibition. The pale chalk cliffs of Les Andelys above the Seine, with the ruins of Richard the Lionheart's Château Gaillard above, gave him a spectacularly scenic subject for his newly systematic divisionist method. The work is now at the Musée d'Orsay alongside key works by Seurat.

The chalk cliffs are rendered in the most precise early divisionist dots, warm in sunlit areas and cool-blue in shadow. The Seine below mirrors the cliffs in a slightly cooler chromatic key. The systematic application of simultaneous contrast is especially clear in the clifftop vegetation — warm greens in sunlight, complementary reds in shadow.