The Port of Saint-Tropez

Signac was greatly shocked by the death of Seurat who had joined him in defending and extolling the spread of Neo-impressionism. Thanks to the efforts of his friend the painter H. E. Cross, Signac left the year after the death of Seurat (1892) on a yacht voyage around the Mediterranean. He discovered the still as yet small fishing harbor of Saint-Tropez during this trip and for the next ten years he traveled between Saint-Tropez and Paris in the creation of his paintings. A series of developments in the artistic directions of Signac's work can be seen over this period. First we see the softening of the linear rigor of his compositions, followed by an increase in size of the distinctive dots of pigment that characterize the Neo-impressionist style. In this later change, he strengthened the characteristics of the individual touches and the contrast between them, surpassing the optical mixture that had been the Pointillists' first objective. This work depicting the port of Saint-Tropez in its entirety is one of his most monumental works of this period, providing an extreme expression of these formal changes. Signaling Signac's emergence from the Neo-impressionists and revealing intimations of the birth of Fauvism, this work represents Signac's achievements at the turn of the century. (Source: Masterpieces of the National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo, 2009, cat. no. 90)