Coal Crane, Clichy

Coal Crane, Clichy (1884) is one of Signac's earliest urban industrial subjects, painted before he had fully adopted Seurat's divisionist method. The Clichy waterfront on the Seine, with its factories, wharves, and industrial machinery, reflected his early anarchist political sympathies: a commitment to seeing working-class industrial reality as legitimate artistic subject matter. The coal crane, an image of labour and industrial modernity, anticipates later work by Signac and his colleagues depicting the unglamorous contemporary city. Kelvingrove Art Gallery, Glasgow.

The industrial subject is handled with broad, vigorous brushwork characteristic of Signac's Impressionist-influenced early style, before his full adoption of divisionism. The crane's skeletal metalwork is rendered in direct, energetic strokes against a pale sky, with the Seine reflecting industrial tones below.