The Seine at Samois (Study)

Samois-sur-Seine, a village on the Seine south of Paris, was one of Signac's Île-de-France working sites during the late 1880s and 1890s when he was building his divisionist body of work in advance of his permanent move to Saint-Tropez. The Seine here is narrower and more enclosed than at Courbevoie or Herblay, flanked by wooded hills that gave different compositional possibilities from the flat suburban reaches near Paris. A study designation suggests this canvas served as a preparatory work for a more finished composition, offering Signac the opportunity to test color relationships and compositional decisions before committing to the final canvas.

The study's marks are somewhat freer and more exploratory than Signac's finished divisionist canvases, with the dots varying more in size and application as he worked through the color problems of the wooded Seine landscape. The river surface receives the most systematic divisionist treatment even in the study, as water reflection was the most theoretically demanding element.