Venice, The Pink Cloud

Painted in 1909 and now at the Albertina in Vienna, this Venetian work belongs to the extended period when Signac painted the city's canals and churches repeatedly, treating Venice as a laboratory for his divisionist palette. The pink cloud title signals his interest in atmospheric phenomena — the particular iridescent pinks and mauves of the Venetian lagoon sky at dusk or dawn that Turner and many others had found irresistible. Signac's Venice paintings, made on visits rather than residency, demonstrate the transportability of his method: the disciplined mosaic of strokes could render the unique reflected light of Venice as convincingly as the Mediterranean south.

The eponymous cloud is rendered in delicate passages of rose, violet, and cream that shift across the upper canvas, contrasted against the deep blue-green of the lagoon water below. Architecture is indicated through vertical clusters of warm orange and ochre strokes, with reflections rippling in cool blue-purple horizontals.