Port de Saint-Tropez, effet du soir

Le Port de Saint-Tropez, effet du soir is among the rare paintings that testify to a specific moment in both Picabia's stylistic development and personal history. Picabia married Gabrielle Buffet in January 1901 but instead of leaving immediately for their honeymoon to Seville, the couple postponed the trip a month and retreated to the South of France so Picabia could paint. The present work was painted in February 1909 during their stay at the port town. Saint-Tropez scenes are a recurrent theme in Picabia's early period, but whereas previously his work had been manifestly Impressionist, it was in 1909 that the artist first began to experiment with the saturated hues and flatter block-like strokes of Fauvism. As Maria Lluïsa Borràs has observed, "landscape--Picabia's favorite subject-matter--was to be the main springboard for his leap into abstraction" (M.L. Borràs, Picabia, New York, 1985, p. 52).

The present work is one of the earliest examples of Picabia's new approach. Large solid planes of color--light blue sky, turquoise sea, yellow and purple boardwalk--construct the scene. No longer concerned with the optical representation of atmospheric effects, here the shift of shadow to light is imaginatively rendered in the juxtaposition of purple and yellow segments of the street. Picabia's exploratory works from 1908-1909 have been described as "syntheses of Fauvism and older styles" (W. Camfield, Francis Picabia: His Art, Life and Times, Princeton, 1979, p. 14). In Le Port de Saint-Tropez, effet du soir we witness precisely that: an artistic evolution.