In the summer of 1876, when Cézanne first discovered the resort town of L'Estaque, near Marseille, he described it to Pissarro: "It's like a playing card. Red roofs over the blue sea. … The sun is so terrific here that it seems to me as if the objects were silhouetted not only in black and white, but in blue, red, brown, and violet." Cézanne painted several views of L'Estaque when he returned there in the early 1880s. This is one of three made from the same vantage point. (The others are in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris, and the Art Institute of Chicago.)

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