The Red Buoy

In 1895 Saint-Tropez was a small fishing port on the Mediterranean, and Signac had been coming there since 1892. Other painters soon followed, among them Matisse, who spent the summer of 1904 at his house, and later Derain and Marquet. The quay here is the one visitors still walk along, a row of tall yellow and pink houses above moored sailing boats. It was not painted on the spot. He worked in the studio from studies made outdoors, setting the colour down in separate square touches, freer than the strict method of his earlier years. The orange-red buoy in the foreground sits on pale blue water, its complementary colour, which is why the eye goes straight to it. A doctor, Pierre Hébert, gave the picture to the state in 1957 while keeping it for the rest of his life.