‘I find this part of France most interesting to paint. The light is wonderfully brilliant even fierce – the weather is superb – Basking!’ (Cadell, quoted in A. Strang, exhibition catalogue, F.C.B. Cadell, Edinburgh, National Galleries of Scotland, 2011, p. 42).

Cadell visited the South of France in the spring of 1923, and again the following year. On the recommendation of fellow colourist, S. J. Peploe he stayed at the Hotel Panorama in Cassis, a small fishing port not far from Marseilles. The vividly coloured houses on the waterfront and the open rolling countryside in the hills above the village were natural subject matter for Cadell who produced some of his most inspired work of the period. Jane and Mary Rough bought a number of Cadell’s paintings in the 1920s, including The Pink House, Cassis.