“Provided I can find a little corner in which to make my nest and a good anchorage for Olympia, that is all I ask: a sky, the sea, the setting sun.” - Paul Signac (qtd. Dymond 357)
When Signac moved to Saint-Tropez in 1892, he was the first Parisian artist to settle in this small seaside village (Dymond 353). Fellow Neo-Impressionist Henri-Edmond Cross had recently moved to Cabasson, a neighboring village, and had recommended this corner of the Mediterranean to Signac. Cabasson did not have an adequate mooring for Signac’s boat the Olympia, however, and therefore Signac settled upon Saint-Tropez (Francoise Cachin 55). Taking up permanent residence in Cabasson or Saint-Tropez was most unusual at the time. Anne Dymond explains in an article for Art Bulletin “A Politicized Pastoral: Signac and the Cultural Geography of Mediterranean France” that “these two Neo-Impressionists (Cross and Signac) thus exemplified the changing tourist trends in the Midi, which had previously attracted mainly wealthy convalescent tourists in winter but was increasingly drawing more fashionable and active year-round tourists seeking an alternative to urban life” (Dymond 357). Signac was indeed searching for an “alternative to urban life,” and he found it in the largely untouched fishing village of Saint-Tropez. Signac painted the above watercolor La Tartane (1900) of a boat in the peaceful Saint-Tropez harbor.
Signac described the untouched character of the Mediterranean as follows:
“This wild, somber and superb region still called the country of the Moors… Saint-Tropez is the capital of this little Saracen kingdom, almost all of whose villages, built at the top of steep hillsides that protect them from attack, are still full of Moorish houses... This isolated little port is one of the charming and simple daughters of the sea, one of those modest little towns, jutting into the water like a shell, nourished by fish and sea air and then producer of sailors” (qtd. Francoise Cachin 56).
Signac would further contribute to the changing nature of the Mediterranean by developing a sort of artist colony in Saint-Tropez. After Seurat’s death in 1892, Signac became the leader of the Neo-Impressionist movement and its authority on color theory, and consequently many aspiring Neo-Impressionist artists came to Saint-Tropez to study from the master. 
Artists that were drawn to Signac’s villa, La Hune, to visit and study include Albert Marquet, Camille Pissarro, Georges Lecomte, Henri Edmond Cross, Charles Camoin, Maximilien Luce, Henri-Charles Manguin, Louis Valtat and Kees Van Dongen (Boquillon 43). Theo Van Rysselberghe was a frequent guest of Signac’s and he painted the canvas at right entitled Signac on his Boat in 1896. Pierre Bonnard also painted a work entitled Signac and Friends (featured at left) while staying with Signac in 1910-11. Signac would later convince Camoin and Manguin to retire to Saint-Tropez to paint with him (Francoise Cachin 87). Thus a colony of artists grew up around the indisputable authority on Divisionist theory, Paul Signac.
According to Signac, “To divide is to ensure all the benefits of luminosity, colour and harmony by the optical intermingling of exclusively pure colours (all the hues of the prism together with all their tones); by the separation of various elements and their proportion (according to the laws of the contrast of gradation and irradiation); by the choice of a brushstroke proportional to the dimensions of the picture” (qtd. Winkfield 68).
In 1904, Henri Matisse came to spend a year with Signac in Saint-Tropez to learn Divisionism from the master. During this time Matisse flirted with Pointillism, but he approached it more as an exercise in coloring and his interest in the style proved to be passing. Nonetheless, Matisse painted the masterpiece Luxe, Calme et Volupté (featured at left) while staying with Signac in 1904. This painting is composed of larger brush strokes, placed further apart than the traditional Neo-Impressionist style and demonstrates a more heavy reliance on pencil outlines. It was exhibited at the Salon des Independants in 1905 before Signac bought it for his personal collection (Francoise Cachin 87).