Corner of the harbour, Honfleur

In the summer of 1886 Seurat left Paris for the Normandy port of Honfleur and worked on six views of the harbour at once. This was the first he began. His method was slow and deliberate. He drew and made small oil sketches out of doors, laid the picture in with long brushstrokes back in his room, then covered the dry surface with the tiny separate dots of colour that had become his signature. The trouble was the black ship at anchor. After eight days it simply sailed out of the harbour, and the painting stayed unfinished where the vessel had been. Seurat was twenty-six and had exhibited his huge Grande Jatte only weeks earlier. He took the Honfleur pictures back to Paris and showed them at the Salon des Independants that autumn.