Women by the Well I

Signac reached Saint-Tropez in the second week of May 1892, after nearly a month of sailing down the Atlantic coast and through the Canal du Midi, and he spent the summer painting the little fishing port. Out of those months came the plan for a large decorative canvas showing a society at ease with itself, the kind of future his anarchist friends in Paris were writing about while the police hunted bomb-makers through the city. Two women drawing water appeared in one of the first sketches for that composition, and Signac decided they deserved a picture of their own. This small study is a step towards it. The finished version went to the Indépendants in the spring of 1893 under a title that told a buyer where to hang it, a decorative panel for a room in half-light. The hill behind the women is real, with the Saint-Tropez citadel on top, though Signac moved the coastline to suit the design.