Place des Lices, Saint-Tropez

Place des Lices, Saint-Tropez from 1904 depicts the main public square of the Mediterranean fishing village that Paul Signac had made into an artists' colony. Matisse arrived in Saint-Tropez in the summer of 1904 at Signac's invitation and spent two months learning Neo-Impressionist technique directly from its leading practitioner. The Place des Lices — with its plane trees, its boules players, and its intense afternoon light — was a characteristic subject for the artists working in Saint-Tropez. This work documents Matisse's most intense period of engagement with Divisionism, before his own colour instincts led him beyond Signac's systematic approach.

The Divisionist influence shows in the systematic application of discrete colour strokes, built up to create optical colour mixing at a viewing distance. Matisse's version of the technique, however, already shows a slightly more impulsive, irregular application than Signac's own rigorously controlled system of marks.