The Pine Tree At St. Tropez

The centre of the painting depicts a tree with a colourful crown which takes up the majority of the canvas. Placed against a background of a pale blue sky, the crown seems to make everything in its immediate surroundings subservient to its movements. Instead of using precise brushstrokes of singular form, Signac complicates the pictorial space, giving its formal flexibility which manifests in the apparent movement of the the branches. The work is divisionist in style and has a tangibly mosaic-like quality, with the fluctuating and yet still harmonious colour interplay splitting up the image into clusters of varying visual temperature. The artificial colour palette used by Signac conveys the impression of the emotional experience of the tree rather than the visual experience, and through subverting traditional colour use the viewer is momentarily transported into Signac's emotional mindset (in relation to the tree) and simultaneously coaxed into sharing it for a few brief moments. This painting belongs to the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts collection.