Golfe Juan

Two umbrella pines lean in from either side like stage curtains, and between them the bay of Golfe-Juan opens up in pink, mint and lavender. Paul Signac painted this stretch of the French Riviera in 1896, and by then he had left behind the tiny pinpricks of paint associated with early pointillism. The strokes here are chunky little rectangles, laid side by side like mosaic tiles, so the water and sky shimmer without ever quite settling into flat color. The tree on the right is the real character of the picture: its trunk twists and splits into gnarled, tentacle-like branches that snake across the orange cliff.

Signac was a sailor before he was famous, obsessed with boats his whole life, and he owned dozens of them over the years. He had settled in Saint-Tropez a few years earlier and spent his time cruising this coastline, which explains the two small sailboats tucked into the left side of the bay. The place itself carries a bit of history too. Golfe-Juan is where Napoleon came ashore in March 1815 after escaping from Elba, beginning the hundred days that ended at Waterloo. None of that drama shows up in the painting, of course. Signac was after something else entirely: the way southern light turns a shoreline into pure color, with a violet path and a hillside of tangerine dots that no photograph would ever record.