Paul Signac

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Status, price and estimation of the artist Paul Signac

Price of a painting by the artist: 34,000 – 10,000,000 €.

Price of a drawing by the artist: 1,200 – 150,000 €.

Price of a print:  70 – 10,000 €

If you would like to have a work by Paul Signac appraised, our experts will take care of everything.

Discovery of art and first exhibitions

Paul Signac is a French landscape painter, born on 11 November 1863 in Paris, who died on 15 August 1935 in his native town. He was very close to the libertarian movement, pointillism and divisionism. He founded, with Georges Seurat, the Society of Independent Artists and was a very close friend of the Fauve painter Victor Dupont.

At the age of 16, in 1879, Paul Signac went to the fourth Impressionist exhibition and discovered the works of Caillebotte, Degas, Monet, Pissarro and Mary Cassatt. He tried to copy the paintings, but was excluded from the exhibition by Gauguin himself, who did not want any copiers. The following year, his father died and he decided to drop out of high school to concentrate on painting. He visited the fifth Impressionist exhibition and had great admiration for Édouard Manet’s work. He rented a studio in Montmartre and began painting. In 1882, he met Pissarro’s cousin, Berthe Roblès, whom he married 10 years later. Paul Signac became friends with Symbolist writers and met Claude Monet on several occasions, who guided and advised him until his death. He took part in the Salon des Indépendants in 1884 and met Georges Seurat, who also exhibited his paintings.

Divisionism and anarchism

In 1886, he created his first divisionist work and became interested in literary symbolism, mainly in Belgium, where he drew on several elements including the social utopia and lost paradise of the Golden Age. That same year, invited by the painter Berthe Morisot, he went to the eighth and last Impressionist exhibition and became friends with Vincent Van Gogh. During the 1890s, he travelled to Italy, to Cassis in the south of France and to Saint-Briac in Brittany and became the leader of Neo-Impressionism.

Paul Signac was an anarchist and identified as such as early as 1888. In 1891 he presented the portrait of his fellow anarchist friend, Félix Fénéon, at the Salon des Indépendants: the painting was a great success. A friend of the publisher Jean Grave, he collaborated on the anarchist newspaper Temps nouveaux from 1896 and assisted the newspaper financially by offering several of his paintings for raffles. In 1915, Paul Signac was appointed official painter to the Navy, a difficult period for him as he was having a very hard time during the Great War. In 1929, he visited many coastal regions for his watercolour project of French ports. He died at the age of 71 from a long illness and was buried in the Père-Lachaise cemetery.

Main works Paul Signac

The Red Buoy (1985)

The Grand Canal in Venice (1905)

The Port of Saint-Tropez (1914)

Recognising Paul Signac’s signature

Like many artists, Signac did not sign all of his works. However, you will find below an example of the signatures to give you an idea. Variations of these signatures do exist, do not hesitate to contact one of our experts to formally authenticate a signature.

Appraising and selling a piece by Paul Signac

If you own a piece by Paul Signac or any other object, ask for a free estimate via our online form.

You will then be contacted by a member of our team of experts and auctioneers to give you an independent view of the market price of your piece. In the context of a possible sale, our specialists will also advise you on the different options available to sell your work at the best price.