Seine, Grenelle

Seine, Grenelle (1899) depicts an industrial reach of the Seine in the southwestern arrondissements of Paris, near the Grenelle district's factories and bridges. Signac's choice of an unglamorous industrial waterway subject connects him to the anarchist political sympathies he had held since the late 1880s, when he was close to figures in the Parisian anarchist milieu. Painting industry and labour, even obliquely through their riverside traces, was a political as well as aesthetic commitment. Amos Rex, Helsinki.

Industrial structures — bridges, quays, distant chimneys — are rendered in warm mosaic patches against a cool river surface. The juxtaposition of built environment and reflected sky demonstrates Signac's systematic treatment of architectural form through divisionist colour fields rather than linear description.