How Much Is Cassis, Cap Lombard, Opus 196 Worth?

Work and status. Paul Signac’s Cassis, Cap Lombard, Opus 196 (1889, oil on canvas, 66 × 81 cm) is a cornerstone of the artist’s early divisionist practice and one of the celebrated Cassis canvases painted in spring 1889. It is held by Kunstmuseum Den Haag (formerly Gemeentemuseum Den Haag), which acquired the painting in 1956 and has extensively published it in collection literature [1].

Method and key comparables. This valuation uses direct, recent auction benchmarks for prime Signac marines. The artist’s record stands at $39.32 million for Concarneau, calme du matin (Opus 219, 1891) at Christie’s New York (Paul G. Allen Collection), a closely related, museum-grade divisionist port scene from just two years later [2]. Another prime-period Saint-Tropez canvas sold for $25.93 million at Christie’s London in 2019 [3]. In 2023–2024, high-quality Mediterranean marines from the mature and later phases repeatedly achieved roughly $9–10 million, including an 1896 Saint-Tropez at $10.1 million (Christie’s London, 2023) and Le rayon vert (Saint‑Tropez, 1906) at ~£7.7m (~$9.9m) at Sotheby’s London, 2024 [4][5].

Why this work prices at the top tier. Opus 196 sits in Signac’s most sought-after bracket: a luminous, divisionist marine from the crucial late‑1880s experimentation that codified his color-theory practice. The Cassis series is heavily cited in scholarship and exhibits a chromatic intensity and structural rigor that collectors prize. The painting’s entrenched institutional provenance (Kunstmuseum Den Haag, since 1956) and deep publication/exhibition footprint add a meaningful premium relative to otherwise comparable marines that surface from private hands [1][7]. Scarcity compounds the effect: closely comparable 1886–1892 seascapes are disproportionately locked in museums, and true like-for-like offerings are rare.

Range and positioning. Anchored by the $39.32m Concarneau record and the $25.9m Saint‑Tropez result, and cross-checked against the $9–10m corridor for later or less pivotal marines, a fair-market estimate for Cassis, Cap Lombard, Opus 196 is $30–45 million. The lower bound reflects robust demand for prime Signac divisionism even in selective markets; the upper bound recognizes the work’s art-historical centrality, scarcity, and institutional imprimatur, which together justify pricing proximate to the artist’s record under strong sale conditions (marquee evening context, guarantee support, optimal seasonality) [2][3][4][5].

Market context. While 2024 saw softer headline auction volumes and a shift toward private sales, quality polarization favored blue-chip, well-provenanced works in Modern and Impressionist categories. In that environment, top Signac marines continued to clear decisively, albeit with fewer trophy consignments on the block [6]. Cassis, Cap Lombard, Opus 196, as a canonical work of the oeuvre, would present as an absolute trophy should it ever be deaccessioned, with competitive depth among best-in-class Neo‑Impressionist buyers.