During her time at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, Bendall had befriended Henri Matisse. Matisse appreciated Bendall's solid grounding in drawing, technique and composition, and encouraged her to modernise her style. Matisse's fauve use of colour and flat rendering of space transformed her painting. After leaving Paris in the summer of 1928, Bendall set off to Collioure, the Catalan port in Languedoc-Roussillon, favoured by her champion. The present painting shows the town in full afternoon, lit by sharp sunlight, which shows Bendall's mastering of colour and light.