Toutes les nouvelles de Cabotages en un clin d'œil ...
_2.jpg)
Your ad here
Sleeping beauty awakes
Artists bring the town back to life
Following the example of Guy de Maupassant, sailor and writer, four years earlier, the painter Signac was struck by the beauty of the port when looking for anchorage for his boat, the Olympia. Like fairy godmothers, Maupassant and Signac conjured up an awakening of this "sleeping beauty" to the world and to herself.
As the port declined, all that was left to the town was its climate, its light, its vines and the Massif des Maures rising up behind it. Before the advent of "pleasure boating", the port offered no more a place to relax.
Along with Seurat, Paul Signac invented pointillism and founded a group of 'scientific impressionists' with Picabia. He grew up under the influenced of the 
Montmartre impressionists and was a co-founder of the "Salon des Indépendants" that caused shockwaves in 1905.
When he discovered Saint Tropez, he settled in a small house close to the Graniers beach, before buying the famous La Hune villa in 1897. This house, along with the Villa Demière, where Manguin was living, became known as an artists' haunt. In 1904, Henri Matisse came and stayed, as he was starting to think about his nascent "fauvism" movement. He was on his way to Collioure, another inspirational port. In Saint Tropez he painted Madame Matisse en kimono, La Place des Lices and also made initial sketches for Luxe, Calme et Volupté at Canebiers beach.
Artists, painters and writers breathed new life into Saint Tropez, but it was film-makers and actors that turned the spotlight on the town. Raimu was shopping at Vachon, long before Brigitte Bardot made the brand famous during the Nouvelle Vague period. The craze continued well into the sixties, and became the start of the up-market Saint Trop' that we know today.
