Trees

Signac sailed into Saint-Tropez in 1892 and stayed. The village then had a few hundred inhabitants and no useful railway, so most people arrived by sea, as his boat had. He rented there at first and bought a house above the bay in 1897. Almond trees come into flower in the Var in February, ahead of everything else, and this is what he made of them. In the same years he was writing the book that appeared in 1899, arguing that colours set down side by side and left unmixed read brighter than colours stirred together on a palette. The canvas is 26 centimetres high and 64 wide, a strip, and the blossom on it is laid in as separate touches of pink, blue and violet with the bare branches showing through.