We spent the summer holidays (half of July and most of August) of 1974 staying in the town of Vence and looking after a flat and a dog for an ex-pat children's author.
In those days, the Cote d'Azure still had a faded grandeur, and during a very social period, we rubbed shoulders with the artistic and the aristocratic including a member of the Esterhazy family, the Dowager Countess Karolyi, the artists Terry, Ruth and Ros Freeman and the composer Leslie Bricusse. We went to parties at the Negresco in Nice and dinners in provencal restaurants, and saw the model Suzy Solidor on the beach near Cagnes sur Mer.
In amidst this social whirl, Holland found time to sketch and paint the scenes around him. In particular he was fascinated in the view across the valley from our apartment to the pre-Alps behind, which at night were lit by wild bush fires in that hot summer. During the day, the fires were tackled by the Canadair planes, scooping water up from the Mediterranean to drop on the fires.
The following three oil sketches show how Holland could work quickly, the paint applied with a palette knife rather than a brush, to create the sense of heat and perfume of a baking hot summer day near the Mediterranean.