Bord de Mer

"As soon as de Staël reached the Mediterranean in the summer of 1952 - he stayed at Bormes and Le Lavandou - his forms became bolder and his paintings clarified... throughout the period from the summer of 1952 to the spring of 1954, de Staël's development was rapid. His pictorial invention was harnessed to great effort, and in everything he produced one feels the force of his originality and vitality. Gradually he simplified his method of composition until, with four or five broad areas of colour, he could evoke not merely the constituent elements of landscape - sky, hills, buildings and a road for example - but even a harbour with boats, a lighthouse among the dunes, or a nude reclining on a divan... in these landscapes and seascapes de Staël often composed on the Impressionist principle of parallel lines laid out one about the other." (D. Cooper, Nicolas de Staël, Bergamo 1961, pp. 61-62)