Capo di Noli, near Genoa

Painted in 1898 and held at the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne, this Italian coastal view from near Genoa marks one of Signac's Mediterranean excursions beyond his familiar Provençal territory. Capo di Noli, with its dramatic cliffs and Ligurian sea, offered motifs of Mediterranean luminosity comparable to Saint-Tropez but with a different geological character. By the late 1890s Signac was well established as the foremost theorist of Neo-Impressionism, having published his influential book D'Eugène Delacroix au Néo-Impressionnisme in 1899, and his Italian coastal paintings of this period show a mature command of his systematic method.

The rugged limestone cliffs are modelled through clusters of warm ochre, terracotta, and pale gold strokes against the deep blue of the Ligurian sea, which is handled in horizontal mosaic bands of contrasting cool tones. The Mediterranean intensity of light is conveyed through heightened chromatic saturation rather than tonal contrast.