By Corey Sandler, Destination Consultant Silversea Cruises
When we say Saint-Tropez, most people think of Brigitte Bardot in a bikini or perhaps modern Children of the Sun lounging around on the beach in no bikini at all.
But the handsome French Riviera beaches and towns of the region were also home to a martyred saint from Pisa, a Japanese sumarai in the early 1600s, and an almost-forgotten World War II invasion site.
Many artists and fashion designers were drawn to the beaches and the special light of maritime places.
Silver Cloud at anchor off Saint-Tropez today
The painter most directly associated with Saint-Tropez was Paul Signac, born in Paris in 1863, but a regular visitor and resident. In 1884 he met Claude Monet and Georges Seurat. He was struck by the systematic working methods of Seurat and by his theory of colors and became Seurat’s faithful supporter.
Seurat and then Signac abandoned the short brushstrokes of impressionism and experimented with carefully placed dots of pure color, intended to combine and blend not on the canvas but in the viewer’s eye. It was called pointillism.
Signac inspired Henri Matisse and André Derain among others, leading to the evolution of Fauvism. (The Wild Beasts, including Matisse, Dufy, and Georges Braques.) Pablo Picasso was also a frequent visitor in the early 1950s.
The next generation of artists who came to work in Saint-Tropez include Bernard Buffet, David Hockney, and Donald Sultan.
Text and images copyright 2016 by Corey Sandler. All rights reserved. If you would like to purchase a high-resolution image, please contact me.
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