After receiving a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts, Léon Bellefleur left for France in July of 1958 to produce his first lithographs at the Desjobert studio in Paris. During his time there he met André Breton, and later on, Bellefleur and his family travelled to Provence where they visited Les Baux with artists Mimi Parent and Jean Benoît, as well as Roland Giguère and his companion. Afterwards, the Bellefleurs settled at the Château Noir du Tholonet, near Aix-en-Provence. This legendary area at the foot of Mount Sainte-Victoire was made famous, most notably, by Paul Cézanne, who painted more than 80 works there and whose colour palette and Cubist inspiration can be found in Angles d’émeraude (1959). With its peaks and valleys and its brilliant, backlit impasto refracting on both sides of the painting, Angles d’émeraude is an ode to the energetic atmosphere of this prolific period in Bellefleur’s career.