Paul Signac Painting Women at the Well in Elementary Series' Leviathan

Summary: The Paul Signac painting Women at the Well hangs with originals and with stolen art slumming as a lithograph in the Elementary series episode The Leviathan.

Former art thief Le Chevalier's collection includes French Neo-Impressionist pointilist painter Paul Signac's Femmes au Puits ("Women at the Well)") in Elementary tv series' Leviathan (season 1, episode 10); in real life, the pointilist painting hangs in Musée d'Orsay, Niveau supérieur, Salle 38, Paris, Île-de-France region, north central France; Wednesday, Dec. 9, 2015, 18:07:12: Sailko, CC BY 3.0 Unported, via Wikimedia Commons

The Paul Signac painting Women at the Well appears in a supportive role in The Leviathan episode of the first season in the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) series Elementary Dec. 13, 2012.

Director Peter Werner and writers Corinne Brinkerhoff, Robert Doherty and Craig Sweeny bring the seascape into a waiting room that bears a stolen masterpiece's lithographed likeness. A 20th-century Post-Impressionist-like lithograph, whose left side communicates blues and yellows like the 19th-century Neo-Impressionist painting leftward across the room, confuses Sherlock Holmes (Jonny Lee Miller). The $40 lithograph disguises one of two Pietà (Sorrow) depictions by Vincent van Gogh (March 30, 1853-July 29, 1890) in 1889 and 1890 for his siblings.

The Van Gogh artwork, extracted by New York businessman Peter Kent as his earlier, evil alter ego Le Chevalier (The Cavalier), exits the original art-embellished room.

The tenth episode in the Elementary series fabricates provenance chains (legal custodies) for the Vincent van Gogh religious oil and for the "all original" wall art.

The Paul Signac painting Women at the Well instead gets the same-meaning French title, Femmes au puits, on wall space in the Musée d'Orsay ("Orsay Museum"). The Museum at 1 Rue de la Légion d'Honneur on the Left Bank of the Seine houses architecture, decorative arts and photography collections, paintings and sculptures. It inhabits the Gare d'Orsay ("Orsay Station") ideated by Victor Laloux (Nov. 15, 1850-July 13, 1937) for the Exposition Universelle ("International Exhibition"), April 14-Nov. 12, 1900.

Françoise Cachin (May 8, 1936-Feb. 5, 2011) joined the Musée d'Orsay as director, 1986-1994, with the Orsay Museum's inauguration Dec. 1, and opening Dec. 9, 1986.

Art, history and music lovers in Paris know Cachin as bride of historian Pierre Nora, companion of musicologist Georges Liébert and mother of publisher Charlotte Liebert-Hellman.

Cachin looked after Musée d'Orsay collections, including the Paul Signac painting Women at the Well, as art historian, author, curator and granddaughter of the pointillist painter. Paul Victor Jules Signac (Nov. 11, 1863-Aug. 15, 1935) moved from architecture to Impressionism as an 18-year-old sailor around European coastlines and, in 1884, to Neo-Impressionism. He named, as muses, Édouard Manet (Jan. 23, 1832-April 30, 1883), Richard Wagner (May 22, 1813-Feb. 13, 1883) and Émile Zola (April 2, 1840-Sep. 29, 1902).

The Paul Signac painting Women at the Well observes the painter's overriding orientation with Georges Pierre Seurat (Dec. 2, 1859-March 29, 1891) toward divisionist, pointillist Neo-Impressionism.

Divisionism pursues an optical mixture (mélange optique) through pointillism's patterning distinct, small points of color, not physically pre-mixed pigments, into images onto near-white or white canvases.

Landscapes, seascapes and urban-scapes queued up Neo-Impressionist subjects, epitomized by Seurat's Un dimanche après-midi à l'Île de la Grande Jatte ("A Sunday on Grande Jatte Island"). Signac removed from his sketched In the Time of Anarchy (Au Temps d'anarchie) one woman raising water buckets, one resting on well rims and one retreating. Perhaps the 194.95- by 131.13-centimeter (76.75- by 51.63-inch) Paul Signac painting Women at the Well suggests John Watson (Lucy Liu) sallying away from Sherlock's scandalous threesomes.

Or perhaps the Paul Signac painting Women at the Well tarries in Elementary since divisionist, pointillist Neo-Impressionism deductively tenders points into wholes and science into art.

Spending "almost, what, 17 hours" in the Svalbard Diamond Exchange's compromised Leviathan vault begins the "rabbit hole" process by which Sherlock Holmes (Jonny Lee Miller) deduces suspects in Elementary tv series' Leviathan (season 1 episode 10): Elementary @ElementaryCBS, via Facebook Dec. 13, 2012

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

Former art thief Le Chevalier's collection includes French Neo-Impressionist pointilist painter Paul Signac's Femmes au Puits ("Women at the Well)") in Elementary tv series' Leviathan (season 1, episode 10); in real life, the pointilist painting hangs in Musée d'Orsay, Niveau supérieur, Salle 38, Paris, Île-de-France region, north central France; Wednesday, Dec. 9, 2015, 18:07:12: Sailko, CC BY 3.0 Unported, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Paul_signac,_donne_al_pozzo_(giovani_provenzali_al_pozzo),_1892,_01.JPG

Spending "almost, what, 17 hours" in the Svalbard Diamond Exchange's compromised Leviathan vault begins the "rabbit hole" process by which Sherlock Holmes (Jonny Lee Miller) deduces suspects in Elementary tv series' Leviathan (season 1 episode 10): Elementary @ElementaryCBS, via Facebook Dec. 13, 2012, @ https://www.facebook.com/ElementaryCBS/photos/a.151627898295663.14686.151013691690417/202994626492323/

For further information:

Cachin, Françoise. 2000. Paul Signac. Paris, France: Gallimard.

Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. London, England: Georges Newnes Ltd., 1892.
Available via Project Gutenberg @ http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1661/1661-h/1661-h.htm

Elementary: The First Season. Los Angeles, CA: Paramount Pictures Corporation, Dec. 13, 2012.

Gignoux, Sabine. 7 February 2011. "Françoise Cachin, une grande voix de la culture s'éteint." La Croix > Culture > Actualité.
Available @ https://www.la-croix.com/Culture/Actualite/Francoise-Cachin-une-grande-voix-de-la-culture-s-eteint-_NG_-2011-02-07-563120

Marriner, Derdriu. 21 December 2012. “The Van Gogh Pietà Painting in Elementary Series Episode The Leviathan.” Earth and Space News. Friday.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-van-gogh-pieta-painting-in.html

Marriner, Derdriu. 14 December 2012. “Edward Hopper Painting Western Motel in Elementary Series' Leviathan.” Earth and Space News. Friday.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2012/12/edward-hopper-painting-western-motel-in.html

Marriner, Derdriu. 29 September 2012. "Are Lesser Clovers Sherlock's Lucky Shamrocks on Elementary's Pilot?" Earth and Space News. Friday.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2012/09/are-lesser-clovers-sherlocks-lucky.html