Women by the Well I

Women by the Well I is the first and likely the most exploratory of Signac's three canvases on the subject, painted as he tested whether his divisionist theory could successfully absorb figure composition — a domain where Seurat had worked most ambitiously but where Signac himself had less practice. The rural setting, the women's labor at the well, and the strong Mediterranean light combined social subject with the kind of outdoor lighting problem divisionism was most suited to analyze. The canvas belongs to the period of Signac's mature theoretical confidence, when he had internalized his color method sufficiently to apply it to new compositional challenges.

The first version tends to be the most searching in its mark-making — the dots slightly less regular, the color intervals slightly less certain — as Signac worked out the problem of translating flesh, fabric, and architectural stone into a single systematic divisionist vocabulary. The strong outdoor light simplifies modeling and intensifies the complementary contrasts.