This is an unusual view of the Chapel of Notre Dame des Cyprès, just outside Fayence on the valley floor off the road to Seillans. This lovely little building was the subject of several of Christine’s landscapes, but usually represented from a much closer viewpoint. Here we see the chapel as virtually the only man-made object in this sweep of countryside that stretches from the rough track in the foreground across the fields of mustard to the forest covered foothills and the beginnings of the Alps beyond. It was painted in the autumn of 1972 while Christine was “between” fixed addresses, waiting to move into her apartment in the village of Fayence, just behind where this picture is painted from. The chapel lives up to its name, surrounded by the tall, thin, picturesque Cypress trees. This was one of three similar-sized landscape panels (see, Near the Basse Collette) that she was working on almost simultaneously. She was calling them “panels” due to their narrow aspect and portrait orientation.

It was views like this that encouraged Christine to stay in France and not move to America, a serious consideration at this time (see the painting My Dilemma for details).

Diary Entries