Die Bonaventure-Kiefer

In 1892 Signac sailed his boat down the Mediterranean coast and put in at Saint-Tropez, then a quiet fishing port most Parisians had never heard of. He rented a small house there, and the southern light pulled his colour toward something brighter and hotter than the grey Seine towns he had been painting. This umbrella pine grew on land belonging to a local man named Bonaventure, which is how it kept its name. Signac built the whole picture from separate dabs of pure colour set side by side, so the eye mixes them at a distance rather than the brush mixing them on the palette. The sea behind breaks into flat bands of blue and rose. He gave the canvas an opus number, 239, as if it were a piece of music.