La Mer en Colère — the angry sea — demands a completely different palette and a completely different kind of paint from the sun-drenched harbour scenes and vivid landscapes for which Guy Charon (1927–2021) is perhaps best known. Here the colour is driven not by joy but by force: the cold greens and grey-blues of disturbed water, the white of broken crests, the dark of a sky pressing down on a sea that has nothing to celebrate. Charon's handling of agitated water is the test of his draughtsmanship as much as his colour sense. The movement of a rough sea — the way a wave builds, crests and collapses — has to be suggested rather than described, caught in the direction and weight of the brushstroke rather than in any attempt at literal rendering. His marks in this canvas are faster and more assertive than in his calmer subjects, the paint applied with the same Fauvist confidence that characterises all his work but here pushed into a more urgent register. The result is a painting that feels physically present — you sense the wind in it. Born in Écueillé in 1927, Charon moved to Paris in 1951 and began exhibiting at the major Salons — the Salon de la Nationale des Beaux-Arts, the Salon des Indépendants, the Salon d'Automne. His work has been compared to that of Raoul Dufy, and the comparison is apt in terms of chromatic boldness and fluency of line, though Charon's handling has its own distinct physical directness. Since 1956 his paintings and lithographs have been exhibited across France, the United States, Switzerland, Monaco, Norway, Sweden and Japan. His work is held in public collections including the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris and the Bibliothèque Nationale.