La Luzerne, Saint-Denis

Seurat painted this in 1884 and 1885, on the flat ground that still separated Paris from Saint-Denis. It was open farmland, though the basilica where the kings of France were buried stood only a short walk beyond it. He was 25 and working out the method he is known for, laying down small separate strokes of unmixed colour and leaving the eye to do the blending. The red specks through the green are poppies in a field of alfalfa. The painting later belonged to Roger Fry, the English critic whose London exhibition of 1910 gave British audiences the word post-impressionist. Edinburgh bought it from Fry's daughter in 1973.