Description
Georges Seurat, Port-en-Bessin, Entrance to the Harbor (1888)
Port-en-Bessin, Entrance to the Harbor was painted in the summer of 1888, when Seurat was working in a small Normandy fishing port. A sandy bank fills the foreground, the narrow harbour mouth opens behind it, and sailing boats stand on the water. This painting is in the Museum of Modern Art, New York, accession 126.1934.
A harbour as geometry
Seurat lays the jetty, the water and the bank out as quiet horizontal bands. The masts are the only sharp verticals, and everything else is arranged so the eye travels slowly.
The dot as method
The colour is placed in small separate touches that mix in the viewer’s eye rather than on the palette. The foreground sand is built from orange, green and blue, not from one brown.
The original
Oil on canvas, 65.1 × 54.9 cm, painted 1888. The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Lillie P. Bliss Collection; accession 126.1934.
How yours is made
Every canvas we supply is a hand-painted oil painting, not a print. A painter works it stroke by stroke at the size you choose.
One of the Normandy coast paintings of 1888.
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