Yvonne Canu
1921-2008 | French

St. Tropez

Signed "Canu" (lower right)
Signed and titled "St. Tropez / y. Canu" (en verso)
Oil on canvas

The picturesque French Riviera is presented in dynamic dots of color in this extraordinary oil on canvas by the French Post-Impressionist Yvonne Canu. The leisurely harbor scene, populated with townspeople and billowing flags, is set in Saint-Tropez, a favorite subject for the artist. Canu was a 20th-century French Post-Impressionist who is best known for her pointillist compositions. Her canvases are distinctly modern, rendered with painstakingly precise dots of pure color that brilliantly blend together to form a cohesive work of art. Although her paintings indeed display the influence of Georges Seurat, founder of Pointillism, in both their technique and choice of subject, her style is nevertheless distinctive. Colorful and avant-garde, this work is a testament to the utter freedom of creativity the artist enjoyed.

Born in Morocco in 1921, Yvonne Canu traveled to Paris to study at the reputable École des Arts Decoratifs. Following the First World War, she entered the circle of the French-Japanese painter Tsuguharu Foujita and the Impressionist Élisée Maclet, both of which profoundly influenced the development of her style. She experimented with not only the impressionist style, but also cubism early in her career. However, it would be the great Georges Seurat who had the most impact on her artistic aesthetic. Inspired by the artist's masterpiece A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of Grande Jatte, Canu developed the pointillist style of painting for which she is famous for today.