Indigo Jackets

This painting is available from Beside the Wave

Bathed in Mediterranean light, Indigo Jackets captures the quiet warmth of a sun-drenched terrace where the scent of foliage mingles with the hum of afternoon air. The ironwork chairs cast lace-like shadows across the pale stone, and indigo jackets, left draped over them, hint at a convivial moment just passed. Painted directly from life, the scene celebrates that fleeting harmony between colour, sunlight and stillness that defines painting en plein air.

Sarah Wimperis’s confident brushwork and radiant palette recall the lyricism of Pierre Bonnard and Henri Matisse, while her sensitivity to light and atmosphere echoes Joaquin Sorolla and the British painter William Nicholson. Like Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, she turns the familiar—terrace, table, tree—into something timeless and luminous.

There is also, by coincidence, a quiet link here to Vincent van Gogh’s Garden at the Asylum; this Provençal chateau once served a similar purpose, and the spirit of Van Gogh’s garden—the solace found in colour, the healing power of sunlight—is felt in every brushstroke. Warm terracottas meet cool blues in a composition that distils the essence of a southern summer: the still heat, the dappled shade, and the tranquil joy of simply being present.