Port-en-Bessin, The Valley

By the summer of 1884 the young Signac had been coming to Port-en-Bessin, a small fishing harbour on the Normandy coast, for three years running. He was 20, and had not yet begun placing paint in separate dots. What you see here is Impressionist handling, loose broken strokes learned largely from Monet, especially in the way the light breaks up on the moving water. The valley of the title is a valleuse, the local word for one of the dry clefts that cut down through the chalk cliffs to the shore. Within a couple of years his brushwork would tighten into the small even touches he became known for, so this stretch of the Normandy coast is one of the last places he painted in the older, freer manner.