Georges Seurat (1859–1891)
1888, reworked around 1889
Oil paint on canvas
Port-en-Bessin, summer 1888
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’.