This is a painting of a store window in St Paul de Vence, showing, among other objects, some locally carved figures of social types (see the cow and farmer to the right of the composition) known as “santons,” as well as religious figurines (saints, the Virgin, the Magi). Both secular and sacred icons are present. The work continues the theme of mannequin paintings such as The Conversation, namely the person as saleable object. These traditional icons suggest how old this idea is, despite its postmodern flavour. This painting, which depicts a window in the south of France, also connects two sections of the artist’s recent work, the South of France group and the Window Series; it further suggests, like the several paintings of store windows in London (e.g., Knights and White Satin), the internationalism of the Window Series concept. Technically, the work contains juxtaposed passages of abstraction and high finish, moving the eye around the picture plane and creating the illusion of deep recession. This selective focus highlights the painterliness of the work; it is not photographic single-point perspective. In its penultimate stage, all the elements of Santons were taken to a high degree of finish; however, the artist then effaced some of this detail with a large wet housepainter’s brush in order to re-energize the painting. Effacing detail in this way is a typical feature of the artist’s watercolour technique. Surface glare on the glass was also added, further obscuring some sections and reinforcing the status of the work as a window painting; the highlights on the glass surface force the viewer back from the contents and impose some sense of the framing device of the window. This minor addition has the effect of changing the painting’s genre: it can no longer be seen as a still life, but becomes a streetscape.

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