In 1958, Coker embarked upon a fruitless expedition to southern France, Antibes in particular. Instinctively drawn to the northern light and landscape that he knew intimately, Coker shied away from the exotic unknown of the Mediterranean. By the 1970s, however, the Mediterranean became a location to inspire rather than repulse. By 1975, Coker had established a reliable base in the Medieval hillside town of Bargemon in the Var, a few miles inland from the Côte d’Azur. His Bargemon residence was at the invitation of Elsbeth Juda, a friend he met through Roger de Grey, Principal of the City and Guilds of London School of Art where Coker began teaching in 1974. Picasso, Matisse, Bonnard, and de Staël all lived out the later stages of their careers in southern France and Coker sought out the many examples of their work scattered across museums in the region. Grappling with an entirely new environment, it was unsurprising that Coker looked to his predecessors to scrutinise how the Mediterranean fared at their accomplished hands. Bargemon become a base from which Coker explored, captivating works of art and locations alike.

Coker depicts the town in Bargemon 2 in its quintessential beauty, situated on a low hill and nestled below higher peaks with church tower rising from the ochre and cream roofs. The curving path from which the viewer surveys Bargemon envelops the gentle summit and the surrounding greenery – perhaps woodland. An atmosphere of hazy warmth pervades the vista, a dusky blurring of colour and form. Even the brushwork has a certain languid feel of suggestion over precision, of strokes mingling and colours coalescing on the canvas.