Sunset, Herblay, Opus 206

Sunset, Herblay, Opus 206 (1889) was painted at Herblay on the Seine north of Paris, one of several riverside locations Signac used for plein-air painting on the Ile-de-France river. The opus number reflects his systematic cataloguing of works. Sunsets presented one of the richest chromatic challenges for divisionist technique: the entire sky had to be calibrated through a warm-to-cool gradient in rapidly changing conditions. By 1889 Signac was at the height of his early mature style. Kelvingrove Art Gallery, Glasgow.

The sunset sky is built from graduating dots of warm orange and red near the horizon through pink and lavender to deeper blue-violet above. The Seine reflects these gradients in a slightly cooler key. The systematic warm-to-cool transition across the sky is a showpiece of divisionist tonal gradation applied to ephemeral atmospheric conditions.