The orange boat, Marseille

The Orange Boat, Marseille (1923) is a late painting by Signac, showing a cargo vessel loaded with fruit at the Marseille quayside. By 1923 Signac had spent decades sailing the French coast and visiting its major ports, and Marseille's Old Port remained a vivid subject. The orange boat — boats painted in warm red-orange being a distinctive feature of southern French working vessels — gave him an intense chromatic anchor for the composition. Matsuoka Museum of Art, Japan.

The orange hull of the cargo boat provides a strong warm chromatic centre, thrown into relief by the deep blues of the sea and sky. Signac's late mosaic technique is freely applied, the large colour patches vibrating against each other with chromatic intensity that recalls Fauvism rather than systematic divisionism.