In the summer of 1952 he (de Staël) returned to the south of France and worked for several weeks at Le Lavandou and in the neighborhood of Marseilles. Then in Feburary 1953 ... de Staël paid a quick visit to Italy, going to Florence, Ravenna, Venice and Milan. That summer he travelled again through Italy and on down to Sicily. In the autumn of 1953, however, he bought a house at Ménerbes between Avignon and Apt, and from that moment established himself in Provence, which he left for trips to Paris and Gravelines in the summer of 1954, and a brief visit to Spain that autumn. Therefore most of de Staël's work from the summer of 1953 till his death - he moved to Antibes in October 1954 - was painted on or near the Mediterranean seaboard. Not unnaturally, in the harder and more blinding light of the south de Staël saw forms more sharply and less impressionistically; also he felt obliged to adopt a different palette. Thus one of the outstanding characteristics of his southern paintings in 1953-54 are colour harmonies which are exalted and often violent. Only de Staël with his unique visual sensibility would ever have dared to try and convey the intensity of his sensations by such an astonishing range of brilliant violets, reds, oranges, blues and yellows as are brought together in canvases.
(D. Cooper, Nicolas de Staël, London, 1961, pp. 52 and 61)