Paul Signac’s painting Gate (Saint-Tropez) shows a corner in the garden of the artis’s house close to the seashore. The painter lived in the south of France from 1892 until 1911.
The bed of sunflowers to the left of the image and the vibrant atmosphere suggest a warm summer day. To the right of the picture the artist portrays his wife standing in the shadow, silhouetted against the white sails of a yacht, possibly his own.
Unlike Seurat, whose pointillist and divisionist practice he explained from a theoretical perspective, Signac does not resort exclusively to pure colours. Rather he mixes and applies them with short, juxtaposed touches which build up shapes and picture planes while allowing our eyes to reconstruct colours as we move away from the painting.
The optical blend effectbecomes perceptible upon moving roughly 10 metres away from the painting, a rather long distance compared to the relatively small size of the picture.
