Gate, St. Tropez

Paul Signac was a serious sailor, and in 1892 he came into the little fishing harbour of Saint-Tropez by boat, liked what he saw, and bought a house there. This is a corner of that garden, painted in 1896, when the town was still an unknown port on the Mediterranean and not yet the resort it would become. A gate opens toward the water. Sunflowers crowd the left. In the shade stands his wife, a dark shape against the white sails of a yacht out on the bay, probably his own. Signac built the whole scene from small separate touches of colour laid side by side, his own looser version of the dot technique Seurat had devised, meant to mix in your eye as you step back. A few years later Matisse came down to stay with him here and painted his first great Mediterranean canvas.