Beautiful composition of two female figures in a corner of a garden, visibly in summer in Villeneuve-le-Comte, with strong contrasts of coloured vibrations in ochres, oranges, bluish whites and dark greens. The two figures in the painting are female: a young blonde woman painted full-length on the right, Françoise, wearing a bright white blouse, concentrating on handling a pot placed in front of her on a round iron garden table occupying the foreground, and the artist’s mother seated high in the background on the left with a large hat and a newspaper in her hand looking at the young woman. On the table covered with an orange tablecloth sits a large melon or pumpkin.
Black lines outline Françoise’s arms and legs. The brushstrokes laid in parallel build up the luminous zones, the shadows and model the volumes. Diagonals and ovals follow one another. Our gaze moves from top to bottom, captured by the light spots in the scene.
The model Françoise is the first of the artist’s three goddaughters, who spent part of her youth with the Lacaze family in the 1940s and 1950s.