MURA · THE COLLECTION · PAUL SIGNAC

Les Andelys, Côte d'Aval

Les Andelys, Côte d'Aval is an oil painting by Paul Signac from 1886, showing the harbour of Les Andelys on the Seine in Normandy. It measures 60 by 92 cm and belongs to his first series of pictures in dots and dashes of contrasting colour. It hangs in Gallery 240 of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Paul Signac · 1886 · Oil on canvas · Neo-Impressionism · story written 25 September 2026

What you are looking at

A view of the river harbour at Les Andelys, a village on the Seine near Giverny. The museum draws attention to how Signac built the scene from geometric forms: a triangular patch of blue creates the curve of the river, while an expanse of trapezoids in the background defines the cultivated hill. Les Andelys is divided into Grand-Andely, set back from the river, and Petit-Andely on the right bank, below the ruins of Château Gaillard.

How it was painted

Signac was born in Paris in 1863. His parents wanted him to study architecture, but he preferred to draw the Seine, and an exhibition of Claude Monet's work in 1880 made a strong impression on him. In 1884 he met Monet and Georges Seurat and became a founder of the Société des Artistes Indépendants. Struck by Seurat's systematic methods and colour theory, he gave up the short strokes of Impressionism for small dots of pure colour meant to blend in the viewer's eye. The museum describes this canvas as part of his first series in the new technique, painted in 1886, and calls Signac the most ardent proponent of the style, which he made his own through attention to geometric form. A keen sailor, he is best known for seascapes and views of ports and rivers. He served as president of the Indépendants from 1908 until his death in 1935.

Where it went

The picture was shown at the third exhibition of the Indépendants in spring 1887 and at the Théâtre Libre d'Antoine that September. Signac gave it to the sculptor Alexandre Charpentier, who died in 1909. It later belonged to Valla in Paris in 1951, to Jean Roubaud in Marseilles in 1960, and to a private collection in Switzerland in 1989. The Art Institute bought it at the Hôtel Drouot in Paris on 21 June 1993, through the prior gift of William Wood Prince. It has since been lent to the Signac retrospective in Paris, Amsterdam and New York in 2001, and to Seurat and the Making of La Grande Jatte in Chicago in 2004.

Why it is in Mura

It belongs to Mura's Impressionist Life collection with a luminous mood: a riverbank in tiny touches of colour below the patterned hills.