Moored Boats and Trees

This is a small thing, oil on a wood panel about the size of a book cover, and Seurat painted it in 1890. That summer he went up to Gravelines, a quiet port on the Channel near the Belgian border, and made panels like this one outdoors, moored boats and a screen of trees, catching the light on the spot before working it up. In front of this calm little harbour it is easy to forget that this is the same painter behind the huge Sunday crowd on the island of the Grande Jatte, built dot by patient dot. He was 31 and had less than a year to live, dying suddenly the following spring. The panel came to the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 2008, given in memory of Anne d'Harnoncourt, who had led the museum.