Entrance to the Port of Roscoff

This small seascape was bought in 1982, while the old Paris railway station of Orsay was still being rebuilt into the museum that opened four years later. It carries two titles, The Entrance to the Port of Roscoff and Sailing Boats and Estuary, and two dates. Orsay gives 1889, the year van Rysselberghe was painting on the north coast of Brittany. The national register of French museum collections places it instead around 1892 or 1893, beside a similar seascape of his called Big Clouds, now in Indianapolis. Whatever the year, the method is strict. Sky, water, a low line of islands and the stone mass of a jetty are built from separate round touches of colour, the jetty warmed with orange against the blue. A few sails stand far out on the water. The painter's monogram sits in the lower corner.