Antibes, Bacon's small harbour

Early in 1917 Signac painted this view of the little harbour at Bacon, on the Cap d'Antibes, three times over. The composition stays the same in each, and only the colours change. Writing about one of the other versions, he noted that a shaded green took the place of the orangey red at the left. In this canvas the leaves spreading across the top left are orange and red against a pink sky, above a small boat and its crew on the still water.

In 1917 Finland was still a grand duchy of the Russian Empire, and it declared independence in December. That same year the Ateneum in Helsinki took in two neo-impressionist oils from Paris, acquired through the Finnish architect and critic Sigurd Frosterus. One was a Provençal landscape by the Belgian painter Théo van Rysselberghe. The other was this canvas, bought the year it was painted.