series of pastels exhibited in February of the following year at the Galerie Georges Petit in Paris.19 The French government immediately acquired Lac Léman (Lake Geneva), a majestic and iconic scene depicted in a number of different versions, all concentrating on the shimmering expanse of water. From the village of Chexbres, with its fine views of the lake, Bourgeois drew the snow-capped peaks of the Alps and the tops of russet trees standing out sharply against the clear azure of the sky. His supreme mastery of pastel technique is further demonstrated by another fine work, his Sallance waterfall, drawn upstream from the lake itself. With Armand Guillaumin in the Estérel Armand Guillaumin invited Bourgeois to join him in southern France in the spring of 1911. Together they explored the French Riviera. Between the Bay of Agay and Le Trayas the bright red rocks, illuminated by the intense blue of the sea and the incomparable southern light, offered the two artists an exceptional panoramic subject and a chromatic impact that was utterly overwhelming for Bourgeois, as it had been for Guillaumin during his first visit in 1885. The red rocks’ fiery display set alight the palette of this artist from Picardie in northern France. Bourgeois turned out many luminous rough drawings and sketches directly from nature there, later transformed into incandescent paintings and pastels.24 With their Fauvist touches, these works constituted a point of no return. Bourgeois had finally discovered the way forward. From that moment on he painted nature with the same eyes as Guillaumin, and, thanks to his colleague, tapped into the sensibility of Monet, Sisley, Gauguin and Othon Friesz, who all loved and celebrated light. Dieulefit After the loss of his second wife, Bourgeois married Jeanne Marthe Bertrand on 19 March 1928 and they moved together to Dieulefit where she was born. Subsequently, he rarely left his Provençal retreat. One such retrospective was the 1926 Cinquantenaire de la Fondation des Prix du Salon et Bourses de Voyages (the 50th anniversary show commemorating this important institution) as well as the retrospective at the 1929 Salon d'Automne and another at the 1945 Salon d’Hiver, while in 1938 Le départ du bateau grec was selected by the Société Lyonnaise des Beaux-Arts to add lustre to its Salon. But apart from these rare appearances, none of his faithful friends, such as Paul Chabas, Georges Rouault and of course Guillaumin, managed to draw