圣特罗佩的钟楼

Paul Signac first sailed into Saint-Tropez in 1892, when it was a small fishing port on the Mediterranean reached mainly by boat, and he liked it enough to make it his home base. This is its bell tower, painted in 1896 in the careful dotted technique he and Georges Seurat had worked out, small separate touches of colour meant to mix in the viewer's eye. By this date Signac had loosened those dots into broader, warmer flecks, catching the southern light on the ochre tower and the pale sky. He would go on drawing other painters south after him, and the quiet town he had found slowly filled with them. The tower still stands over the old harbour.