137 - Paul SIGNAC (1863–1935)

Paul SIGNAC (1863–1935) Mont Blanc, ca. 1921 Ink and ink wash with a touch of blue gouache. Signed lower right. Label on the back of the mount: “Catalog No. 3079 .” (Sun-faded paper, scuffs, and small tears). 71 x 98 cm Provenance: - No. 3079 (label on the back). - Jean Adhémar Collection, Paris. Passed down through the family. This work is comparable to the 1921 painting *Le Mont Blanc, Rose*, which was exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants that same year before passing through the Bernheim-Jeune gallery in Paris, the Giroux gallery in Belgium, and the Golschmidt gallery in Germany. Georges Jamati writes about this painting: “The interplay of lines alone—the calm of the horizontal ridges, the momentum of the verticals—is enough to make Mont Blanc emerge behind a bold foreground—a patch of grass, no doubt, but above all a splash of color—like an immaterial apparition, a sort of mountain of clouds. To tell the truth, our personal memories of the mountains do not evoke such a dream. But P. Signac could not have better expressed the kind of ecstasy of color that a naturalistic mysticism awakens in him. He worked as a master decorator while also being a deeply emotional artist, relentlessly striving to discipline his free sensations in order to achieve a passionate synthesis” (in “Le Salon des Indépendants,” Rythme et Synthèse, March 1921, p. 140). Our drawing appears to be a fully realized study of Mont Blanc, Rose (reproduced in Françoise Cachin, with the collaboration of Marina Ferretti-Bocquillon, *Signac. Catalogue raisonné de l’œuvre peint, Paris, Gallimard, 2000, no. 545, p. 315). In both works, the mountain range is conceived as a play of contrasts between dark masses and luminous surfaces. The wash technique creates powerful contrasts that evoke the effects Signac achieved through color on canvas. The rendering of the ridges and the delicate highlights of blue gouache in this drawing recall the sinuous, dynamic lines formed by the brushstrokes of color in the painted work. This theme finds an echo in the artistic circle gathered around Georgette Agutte, a painter and sculptor, and her husband Marcel Sembat, Minister of Public Works from 1914 to 1916 and a great art lover. As collectors and patrons, the couple regularly hosted several leading figures of the French avant-garde at their estate in Savoie, including Henri Matisse, Albert Marquet, André Derain, and Paul Signac.