The Orange Boat, Marseille

Signac was 60 when he painted this, and Marseille had become one of his regular stations. He had worked the harbour during the First World War, when he was living along the coast at Antibes, and the large view he made of its entrance in 1918 is now in the Musée d'Orsay. The old port he set up in front of had long since lost the serious traffic. The steamers moved north to the new Joliette basins in the 1850s, which left this rectangle of water to fishing boats, coasters and cargoes like the one the title names, a boat in with oranges. The paint sits here in broad flat blocks, far wider than the small dots of his early years, with the masts and their reflections holding the picture upright. It is in Tokyo now, in the museum built around the collection of the property developer Seijiro Matsuoka.