Majorelle

The colours, plants, and play of form and negative space in the lushly modernist Jardin Majorelle inspired the boldly apposite harmonies in Seaton’s Majorelle paintings.

Cultivated in the 1930-40s by the French painter Jacques Majorelle as the setting for his home, an art-deco-Islamic villa designed by Paul Sinoir, the house and gardens were later restored and expanded by Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé.

A keen botanist, Majorelle travelled the world to find the widest possible variety of desert-hardy plants for his garden, which includes rare specimens of cacti, palm trees, bamboo, agaves, water lilies and other flowering plants.

As the gardens grew, Majorelle enhanced certain key colour sequences, the most distinctive being the play of green against blue. Lying closely on the spectrum these colours tend to clash or cancel each other out. But Majorelle’s signature blue - an intense, ultramarine - enhances tones from lime to olive to Verdigris, an effect heightened by complementary notes including bright yellow pots, terracotta columns, and winding red-ochre pathways.