Place des Lices, St. Tropez

The Place des Lices in Saint-Tropez was Signac's most intimate local subject — the boules square directly adjacent to his studio and home, the social heart of the village where he spent his summers. Unlike the harbor or coastal subjects that formed the bulk of his output, the Place des Lices was a domestic and social space: local fishermen and tradesmen playing pétanque under the shade of the plane trees, the quiet provincial afternoon he had chosen over Parisian artistic celebrity. He painted the square repeatedly across his Saint-Tropez years, and the multiple versions show it across different seasons and times of day.

The plane trees' dappled shade creates Signac's most complex optical problem: the alternating patches of warm sunlight and cool shadow on the ground plane require a fine-grained divisionist analysis of the transitional zones where direct and indirect light mix. The tree trunks are painted in warm ochres and greys, with the canopy above built from layered green and blue-green dots.