La pointe de Saint-Pierre à Saint-Tropez

Van Rysselberghe visited Saint-Tropez in 1896, one year after Paul Signac had settled there and transformed the fishing port into the capital of divisionist painting. Signac's presence had already attracted other Pointillist painters, and Van Rysselberghe's arrival continued this colonisation of the Provençal coast by the Neo-Impressionist circle. Now in the Luxembourg City History Museum, this canvas showing the headland of Saint-Pierre is among Van Rysselberghe's most purely optical works: the high-summer Mediterranean light at Saint-Tropez provided the conditions under which divisionism could demonstrate its theoretical claims most convincingly, since the vibration of colour in strong sunlight was most evident. The Saint-Pierre headland, with its lighthouse and rocky profile extending into the bay, gave the painter a composition whose geometry — clear horizontal sea, vertical architectural element, sky — suited the systematic divisionist application.

Full divisionist technique is applied: the entire canvas is covered with small, regularly sized touches of unmixed pigment, their optical mixture creating the luminous colour effects that the theory promised. Mediterranean summer light at Saint-Tropez provided the maximum available colour vibration. The composition is built from three primary zones — sky, sea, headland — each treated with characteristic colour analysis.