Antibes

In this lively watercolor, André Smith captures a crowded outdoor market in Antibes, France, where shoppers gather beneath sunlit awnings in the town's narrow streets.

In this watercolor, J. André Smith turns a busy market day in Antibes into a bright mosaic of color and light. Shoppers in hats and long dresses crowd around stalls beneath broad cream and striped green awnings, some carrying baskets, while vendors work from tables set into arched doorways. Above the crowd, balconies spill over with potted plants, and a woman leans from a balcony at left beside a painted wall sign advertising wine ("Vins"). A street lamp juts from the wall on an iron bracket, and at right a tree with warm ochre foliage and bare violet branches rises over the market umbrellas. Smith breaks the buildings, shadows and pavement into angular, faceted planes, a sign of the Cubist influence that also shapes his etchings of the period, while loose washes of ochre, rose, violet and pale green give the scene its warmth and movement. Faint pencil underdrawing remains visible beneath the paint in places. Signed and inscribed "André Smith / Antibes" at lower right, the work is a vivid record of everyday life on the Côte d'Azur and a colorful companion to Smith's prints of the same town.