Antibes. Small Port de Bacon

Antibes, Small Port de Bacon (1917) was painted during World War One, when Signac retreated to the Côte d'Azur while Paris was under threat. Antibes had been one of his regular Mediterranean painting destinations since his years at Saint-Tropez, and he knew its jagged coastline of limestone headlands and sheltered coves intimately. Working in a small harbour during the war years, with the larger world in violent convulsion, the peaceful Mediterranean subject takes on an elegiac quality.

The small harbour is rendered in Signac's late broad-patch mosaic style, with vivid Mediterranean blues and ochres applied in free, square strokes. The limestone coast glows with warm reflected light, the sea contrasting in deep cobalt. The technique is freer and more spontaneous than his systematic early divisionism.