Entrance of The Port of Honfleur (Entrée du port d’Honfleur)

Seurat spent eight weeks of the summer of 1886 at Honfleur, in a rented room on the hill above the Normandy port, three or four hours from Paris by train, and walked down to the water to paint. For this one he stood out on the Jetée du Transit, the middle pier, looking at the narrow gap where the harbour opens to the sea. Painters had been coming here for decades and filling their canvases with wide views of a picturesque old port. Seurat flattened his and crowded the channel with masts, buoys and the hulls of steamers. Quiet as the picture looks, the harbour was a working one: from those quays a boat called the Maria ran a regular cargo and passenger service across to Southampton.