Women by the Well II

Women by the Well II is the middle work in Signac's trio of canvases treating women at a village well, produced as he worked through the compositional and coloristic challenges of applying divisionist theory to the human figure. The series reflects the influence of his deceased friend and theoretical partner Seurat, whose Un dimanche après-midi à l'Île de la Grande Jatte had demonstrated that systematic divisionism could encompass large-scale figure composition as well as landscape. Each version of Women by the Well represents a different approach to the same figure-landscape problem.

Version II likely introduces compositional modifications from the first canvas — adjusting figure scale, viewing angle, or the relationship between figures and well — while maintaining the systematic divisionist application throughout. The palette analysis of skin in Mediterranean light against cool shade is among the most demanding exercises in neo-Impressionist color theory.