Seurat

LE BEC DU HOC (GRANDCAMP)

1885, reworked around 1888-89

Oil paint on canvas

'La Pointe du Hoc', also known as 'Le Bec du Hoc' after its beak-like shape, was a rocky formation a few kilometres east of Grandcamp. Instead of jutting out to sea, the cliff here seems to float dramatically above it and rises to interrupt the horizon line. In his early seascapes, Georges Seurat used dashes of colour to render the water. The vegetation and rocky terrain are created with short strokes in a criss-cross pattern. Some of the finer dots of colour were added several years later, when Seurat painted a border around the image, as he did for many other works.

STUDY FOR 'LE BEC DU HOC (GRANDCAMP)

1885

Oil paint on wood panel

Georges Seurat often made oil sketches on small wooden panels as part of his creative process. He painted them out of doors using a travel paint box, which held his panels on the inside of the lid and painting materials in the bottom. This work was made on the tall cliffs of western Normandy, overlooking a famous rock formation along the coast. It is preparatory for the painting on the left, whose composition follows the sketch quite closely. The distinctive rock feature no longer exists in this form due to erosion and damage sustained during the Normandy landings of the Second World War.

THE 'MARIA' (HONFLEUR)

1886, reworked around 1888-89

Oil paint on canvas

For his second stay on the Channel coast, in the summer of 1886, Georges Seurat settled in Honfleur, a picturesque town long popular with tourists and artists. Located on the estuary of the Seine, it saw the increasing industrialisation of its port in the late nineteenth century as commerce developed.

In this work, Seurat focused on Honfleur's docks and the ship 'La Maria', which operated a regular cross-Channel service to Southampton, as indicated by the sign just discernible on the right. The absence of figures on the quays is notable in what was in fact a busy harbourside. Seurat chose to focus entirely on the dynamic lines of the ship and port infrastructure, uninterrupted by human presence.

THE HOSPICE AND THE LIGHTHOUSE OF HONFLEUR

1886

Oil paint on canvas

This work is one of seven canvases begun in Honfleur in 1886, the most productive of Georges Seurat's seascape campaigns.

While all the paintings were started there, they were completed in his Paris studio that autumn and winter. Seurat recalled working on this painting for two and a half months. The site he chose had long been favoured by painters and holidaymakers.

Contemporary postcards (shown here) set the lighthouse at the centre of a vast expanse of beach and sky. In contrast, Seurat pushed the structure to the very top edge of the canvas, creating a point of tension. In so doing, he turned a traditional scenic view into a more daring composition.

THE SHORE AT BAS-BUTIN (HONFLEUR)

1886

Oil paint on canvas

Georges Seurat painted this view from Butin Beach, or Bas-Butin, located west of Honfleur, not far from where he was staying.

In the distance, a cargo ship and a strip of land remind us that we are not looking towards the open sea but across the busy estuary of the Seine. The Honfleur paintings are particularly revealing of a moment of transition in Seurat's technique. A flurry of criss-cross brushstrokes acts as an initial layer, covered by a 'skin' of wide, irregular dots, often applied once the first layer had had time to dry. Despite this thickly coated surface, the white priming or preparatory layer has been left visible in certain areas, as part of the colour scheme.

ENTRANCE OF THE PORT OF HONFLEUR

1886, reworked around 1890

Oil paint on canvas

This painting depicts the busy port of Honfleur, with sailboats, steamships and buoys crowding its entrance. To the right are the tall signal mast and shorter lighthouse that provided navigators with indications of tide levels and access to the harbour. A contemporary postcard (shown here) places us in the same spot as Georges Seurat, revealing how carefully he rendered the details of his surroundings.

This painting was gifted by Seurat to the critic Félix Fénéon, an early supporter of the artist's work. Fénéon coined the term Neo-Impressionism to describe Seurat's radical new technique.

THE PORT OF HONFLEUR

1886

Conté crayon on paper

This highly finished drawing is reunited here with its related painting (number 8) for the first time since the dispersal of Georges Seurat's studio in 1891. In Honfleur, Seurat produced not only oil sketches but also large drawings. He always used the same medium, a type of crayon made of compressed graphite and carbon black that had been patented a century earlier by Nicolas-Jacques Conté. Seurat favoured it over charcoal or pastel as it does not smudge but allows for a variety of tones depending on the pressure applied. Seurat's crayon sometimes skipped over the ridges of his heavily textured paper. These areas of white create points of light that look like reflections on the water and clouds.

STUDY FOR 'THE SHORE AT BAS-BUTIN (HONFLEUR)'

1886

Oil paint on wood panel

In this small oil sketch made on the beach in Honfleur, Georges Seurat captured the main elements that would form the composition of the related finished canvas, displayed on the adjacent wall to the left (number 7). He deftly translated the subtle effects of light in a myriad of little dots and dashes of blue, green, umber and white. Each colour appears in the different parts of the painting in varying intensities, harmonising the scene as a whole. In the final painting, Seurat created a greater sense of depth by replacing the single sailboat in this sketch with two smaller ones that draw the eye further into the distance.

THE CHANNEL OF GRAVELINES:

GRAND-FORT-PHILIPPE

1890

Oil paint on canvas

On either side of the channel of Gravelines, just before it reached the sea, stood the hamlets of Grand-Fort-Philippe and Petit-Fort-Philippe, where Georges Seurat stayed in the summer of 1890. In this work, he looked across the strip of water towards the tide signal station, with its tall mast punctuating the sky. By choosing to accentuate the wide swathe of foreground and sky, Seurat created a feeling of expansiveness that is particular to this summer campaign.

THE CHANNEL OF GRAVELINES:

DIRECTION OF THE SEA

1890

Oil paint on canvas

Just a small section of Gravelines offered

Georges Seurat the views he used in his four paintings of the town. His favoured site was the area where the channel widened slightly as it reached the sea, allowing boats to moor - a recess most visible in this painting.

Although Seurat's Gravelines compositions are full of detail, it was his rendering of light that captivated early admirers. His friend and fellow Neo-Impressionist Paul Signac remarked of these works, 'you don't feel the technique at all. All the awkward aspects of the craft disappear and only the benefit of light and harmony remains... This type of painting does not need bright light since it creates its own'

PORT-EN-BESSIN - A SUNDAY

1888, reworked around 1889

Oil paint on canvas

Each new site brought new points of interest for Georges Seurat. After remaining in Paris in summer 1887, he returned to Normandy in 1888 and stayed in the fishing village of Port-en-Bessin. There, he was drawn less to the open sea than to the newly modernised infrastructure of the port. This view is taken from the inner harbour, looking out to the quays and the Channel beyond. An unusually whimsical element is introduced amidst the strict geometry of the composition by the fluttering flags, whose shape echo the large cloud in the sky. Flags were often flown on French boats at harbour on Sundays, the day noted in Seurat's title.

PORT-EN-BESSIN -

THE BRIDGE AND THE QUAYS

1888, reworked around 1889

Oil paint on canvas

The six paintings (numbers 11-16) Georges Seurat produced in Port-en-Bessin are reunited in this exhibition for the first time since they were unveiled in February

1889. They are displayed here in the order chosen by Seurat. As a group, they create a composite image of the port, with three views taken from the quays and three from the nearby cliffs. Here, Seurat focused on the new swivel bridge across the harbour entrance and the iron structure of the fish market, signs of modernisation that also feature in postcard views from the time (shown here). The three figures that break up the expanse of the foreground are a rarity in Seurat's coastal works, which are usually devoid of people.

PORT-EN-BESSIN -

THE OUTER HARBOUR (LOW TIDE)

1888

Oil paint on canvas

Life on the coast of Normandy followed the rhythm of the tide, which determined when boats could leave and enter port. In this work, the outer harbour of Port-en-Bessin is almost entirely dry and a boat rests at an awkward angle on the sand. Georges Seurat's brushstrokes are remarkably varied, both in their size and shape. The stone structures are rendered with thick dots of light colour, while the shadows are depicted with much finer points of dark blue enlivened by orange and red. This work is one of only three canvases by Seurat known to have been sold during his lifetime (the other two are numbers 6 and 7).

PORT-EN-BESSIN -

THE OUTER HARBOUR (HIGH TIDE)

1888, reworked around 1889

Oil paint on canvas

This is one of three paintings Georges Seurat made from the cliffs surrounding Port-en-Bessin, which complemented the three scenes he painted of the harbourside in the town itself. The vantage point was one adopted by earlier artists and favoured by postcard publishers for its far-reaching views (shown here). However, Seurat was most interested in composing the varied forms of the cliffs, buildings, harbour walls and boats. He greatly enlarged one of the sailboats to provide a strong vertical form on the left-hand side. The dark painted border was added by Seurat at a later date to amplify the luminosity of the painting.

He also favoured contrasting frames and this one is said to have been painted by him.

PORT-EN-BESSIN, ENTRANCE TO THE OUTER HARBOUR 1888, reworked around 1889

Oil paint on canvas

Georges Seurat captured fishing boats leaving the safety of the harbour and heading out to the open sea, already dotted with many white sails. To paint this view, the artist remained in the same spot as for the painting on the left (number 14) but rotated north towards the sea. The patches of darker blue on the water, representing the shadow of clouds, constitute a particularly stylised and patterned element of the composition.

They reveal how light and shadow can be created through colour, something that fascinated Seurat. The soft and iridescent light of the northern coast is compellingly rendered by Seurat's nuanced application of varied dots.

THE SEMAPHORES AND THE CLIFF

1888, reworked around 1889

Oil paint on canvas

This work is an outlier among the six paintings Georges Seurat created in the summer of 1888. Here, he turned his back on Port-en-Bessin to focus on the dramatic cliffs to the west. However, even this view retains signs of human activity with the inclusion in the upper left of the new semaphore inaugurated that year and a large buoy out at sea. Seurat's radical technique consisted of juxtaposing dashes and dots of unmixed colour on the canvas.

He was interested in contemporary optical theory, which contended that by merging in the viewer's eye rather than being blended on the palette, colours became more vibrant

- a phenomenon called 'optical fusion'.

LE CROTOY (DOWNSTREAM)

1889

Oil paint on canvas

For his 1889 summer campaign, Georges Seurat moved further up the coast to the town of Le Crotoy, located on the estuary of the river Somme. Instead of cliffs, the region offered low sand dunes and the two paintings he made that summer mark a major shift in his coastal scenes. The tight and deliberately congested compositions of Honfleur and Port-en-Bessin have been replaced by expansive vistas. Here, the breadth of the beach is indicated by a few vertical lines representing tiny figures on the sand. This work also shows an increasingly refined approach to the application of paint and a tightening of his dots of colour.

THE CHANNEL OF GRAVELINES:

AN EVENING

1890

Oil paint on canvas

Georges Seurat spent his last summer in the town of Gravelines, located between the ports of Calais and Dunkerque. He was continuing his move away from picturesque Normandy and towards the flatter and less touristy recesses of northern France. In the four large paintings created there - all of which are included in this exhibition - he focused on the long channel that provided the town, situated slightly inland, with access to the sea. This evocative view in meticulously applied tones of purple and blue shows the channel at dusk, with the water reflecting the last rays of light. The painting epitomises the contemplative and serene qualities of Seurat's seascapes that were so admired by early reviewers.

STUDY FOR 'THE CHANNEL OF GRAVELINES: AN EVENING'

1890

Oil paint on wood panel

This refined preparatory sketch for the large painting on the adjacent wall (number 18) shows how Georges Seurat settled on its final composition, buttressed by the dark lamp post on the left and the sweep of the quay in the foreground, where the channel widens. The balance is strongly tilted to the left by the tall tide signal mast and the block of the signal station below. Seurat would adjust this in the finished work with the addition of two large anchors and a sailboat to the right.