Saint-Tropez, le tartane

Saint-Tropez was a remote fishing village when Signac sailed in during the spring of 1892, looking for somewhere to keep his boat. He was the first Paris painter to settle there, and the harbour became his subject for years afterwards. The tartanes in this panel are the local working boats, one mast carrying a single big sloping sail. Signac made the thing outdoors, oil over pencil on a piece of wood under 30 centimetres wide, as preparation for a full sized picture of the port. Samuel Courtauld, chairman of the English textile firm that carries his name, bought it from a Berlin dealer in 1928, and it came to London with the rest of his French paintings in 1948.