Les Andelys, Côte d'Aval

Paul Signac · 1886

Medium

Oil on canvas

Original size

60 × 92 cm (23 5/8 × 36 1/4 in.); Framed: 77.5 × 109.6 × 6.4 cm (30 1/2 × 43 1/8 × 2 1/2 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Impressionism

Painted along the chalk cliffs of Normandy in the pivotal year of 1886, Paul Signac's *Les Andelys, Côte d'Aval* captures the Seine valley with a luminosity that marks a turning point in modern painting. Signac had just aligned himself with Georges Seurat, and this work sits at the threshold of that decisive shift — the loose brushwork still carries traces of Impressionism, but the colour relationships and structural deliberateness point unmistakably toward the Divisionist method he would soon embrace fully. Where the Impressionists painted sensation, Signac was beginning to paint light as a system: colours chosen and placed to intensify one another, the eye doing the mixing rather than the palette. It was at the eighth and final Impressionist exhibition that same year that Seurat unveiled *A Sunday on La Grande Jatte*, with Signac exhibiting alongside him — an event widely regarded as the public birth of Neo-Impressionism. This hand-painted oil reproduction is executed on canvas using artist-grade oils, preserving the textural warmth and chromatic sensitivity of Signac's original brushwork in a way that no print can replicate. Every stroke is laid by hand, giving you a living connection to one of the most consequential moments in colour theory and modern art.