Canal of Overschie

The Canal of Overschie runs through the flat Dutch landscape near Rotterdam, and Signac's visit to Holland was part of his broader campaign of travel that took him beyond France to apply divisionist theory to different national landscapes and atmospheric conditions. Dutch canal subjects carried obvious resonance with the seventeenth-century tradition of landscape painting that Signac admired, and the flat, water-dominated terrain of the Netherlands suited his compositional preferences — wide skies, reflective water surfaces, and the clear northern light that was different from but comparable to Mediterranean clarity.

The Dutch canal subjects employ a cooler, greyer palette than Signac's Mediterranean work, with the northern light analyzed in blue-greys, silver-whites, and muted greens. The flat canal surface, reflecting sky and the low riverbank vegetation, provides the layered horizontal composition he found most congenial to divisionist treatment.