Lighthouse at Gatteville

In 1931 Paul Signac bought a house in Barfleur, a small fishing village on the tip of Normandy. From the studio he set up in its garden he could see the lighthouse at Gatteville, a granite tower about 75 meters high standing over the sea. He painted it again and again in the years that followed. Signac had helped invent pointillism decades earlier with Georges Seurat, building pictures from separate touches of pure colour, and here the sea is laid down in short strokes of mauve and green. This little view dates from 1934, the year before he died. It is painted on cardboard and measures barely 28 centimeters across, a quick record of something he saw from home every day.