Bertaud's Pine

Bertaud's Pine (1899) is one of several paintings Signac made of the distinctive umbrella pine trees that dominated the Saint-Tropez landscape above the town. The pine tree as pictorial subject — silhouetted canopy against a bright sky — is closely associated with Signac's Saint-Tropez period and anticipates the concerns of Matisse and early Fauvism that would emerge from this same region. By 1899 Signac was refining the large-patch mosaic style that represented an evolution beyond strict Seurat-derived divisionism.

The pine canopy spreads across the upper composition in deep blue-green mosaic patches, its warm ochre trunk providing chromatic contrast. The sky behind is built in graduating cool blue-to-warm patches that create atmospheric depth. The reduction of the tree to essential mass and contour anticipates later Fauvist simplification.