The bay of Saint-Tropez

The Bay of Saint-Tropez from 1904, now in the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in Düsseldorf, depicts the broad sweep of the Mediterranean bay that made Saint-Tropez so celebrated among artists. This view from the water's edge or from the hills above would have been one of the defining experiences of Matisse's 1904 summer there with Signac. The German museum's acquisition reflects the major collecting of French modernism by German institutions in the early twentieth century, which continued until it was disrupted by political upheaval in the 1930s.

The bay's horizontal expanse provides a natural compositional base — water, coast, and sky arranged in broad bands that Matisse complicates with the masts and hulls of harbour boats. The Divisionist influence is present in the broken, systematic treatment of the water's surface under the Mediterranean midday light.