Oil on canvas

89 x 130 cm. 35 x 51 1/8 in.

Signed in English on upper left
LITERATURE
1996, Dragon Art NO.78, Jye Chu Publishing Firm, Taipei, p.61
2001, Taiwan's Treasures: Western Art From Private Collections, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei, p.153
2003, Legend of The Mountain-Encountering Western Masteres' Works, Mountain Art Foundation, Taipei, p.2
2014, The Joy of Collecting Art, Artist Publishing, Taipei, p.47

EXHIBITED
Jul 2000, Treasure in Mountain-The Select Collection of Mountain Art Museum, Mountain Art Museum, Kaohsiung
Oct 2001, Taiwan's Treasures: Western Art From Private Collections, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei
Mar 2003, Legend of the Mountain-Encountering Western Masteres' Works, Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai
Apr 2003, Legend of the Mountain-Encountering Western Masteres' Works, Sichuan Art Museum, Chengdu
Jul 2007, Encountering Western Master's Works, Mountain Art, Beijing
Apr 2014, the Joy of Collecting Art, Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall, Taipei

PROVENANCE
Dec 1992, Sotheby's London Autumn Auction, Lot 197
Important Private Collection, Europe

Note: This work will be included in the Buffet Catalogue raisonne being prepared by Maurice Garnier

A Shore Brimming with Artistic Sentiments in Post-War France
Buffet's Saint-Tropez
At the southernmost point of Provence is a glamorous, languorous city where beautiful women, artists, and celebrities bask in the sunlight. This city is none other than Saint-Tropez, a world-renowned travel destination that overlooks the glittering azure sea.
This city's enchanting scenery has inspired the likes of Henri Matisse and the founder of the pointillism movement, Paul Signac, as well as served as the backdrop for And God Created Woman, one of Brigitte Bardot's most popular films. In 1958, the French painter Bernard Buffet travelled to Saint-Tropez on a whim and had a serendipitous meeting with Annabel Schwob: the woman with whom he would spend the rest of his life and who would consistently encourage him to strive for greater heights in his work. Buffet completed Saint-Tropez later that year.
A Major Transition in his Thirties
The art historian Claude Roger-Marx once wrote on the subject of Buffet, “The distress in these monochromatic compositions, the emptiness which translates all that the heart lacks, the elongation of verticals and horizontals, the nervousness of evil lines of force, lightly scratching the thin paint, all proclaim a painter fit to assume like Kafka, Kierkegaard, Sartre, the insecurity and deprivations of his childhood.” Buffet's somber and lonely childhood was the source of his talent, as well as an internal obstacle to his personal growth.
By the mid-1950s, as Buffet gained more experience with age and as the mores of the time changed, his artistic style began to move in a different direction. He used techniques such as heaping, stretching, and scraping oil paints when composing his works as well as experimented with choice of color. It was in 1958, when Buffet met the love of his life and completed Saint-Tropez, that he truly matured in terms of his style. This painting depicts one of the city's landmarks, the Vieux Port. It is the first of Buffet's works to not feature a gray or faded monochrome color scheme； rather, Buffet makes bold use of primary colors. Yellows and greens come together to form the mountain peaks, while the sea and the reflection of buildings are depicted in shades of red and blue. This use of color adds to the vibrancy of the landscape. On a blue background, Buffet overlays the faint coffee-colored buildings with pink hues, much in the way that a woman might add rouge to her cheeks. This is the first landscape in which Buffet has amplified, rather than dampened, the colors of his chosen subject； it is as though he was adding emotional significance that only he and Anabelle could understand. In the 1960s, he would add one or two eye-catching hues to a number of his works, such as his La Corrida series, Les Fleurs, and Papillon. Later on, his choice of color became even more diverse and bold. This stylistic evolution would not have occurred were it not for Saint-Tropez, that little city where he and Anabelle met.
Art critics later unanimously agreed that Buffet's works attempt to depict sentiments, rather than reality. The three small sailboats featured in the foreground of Saint-Tropez are painted in bold, rigid lines. Unlike the sailboats in Buffet's previous works, which struggle against the wind as they traverse the seas, the sailboats in this work have their triangular sails down and are stowed in one corner of the beautiful port, while further away, a couple of larger boats are also visible with two masts each. Given Buffet's tendency to depict sentiments in his work, we can give ourselves license to imagine that the pale orange boat is the timid Buffet, while the red boat is the fiery Anabelle. The sturdier one beside them is their most faithful friend, Luc Saint-Tropez perhaps represents Buffet's fond memories of friendship and love.

Price estimate:
HKD: 1,400,000 - 2,400,000
USD: 178,300 - 305,700

Auction Result:
HKD : 2,124,000