Portrieux, The jetty, grey weather

On a grey, overcast day the sea goes flat and the colour drains out of everything, which makes it an odd thing to paint if your whole method is built on dots of bright, pure colour. That is the problem Signac set himself here at Portrieux in Brittany in 1888. The title says it plainly, grey weather, and the picture is nearly all soft greys and muted greens. Look closely though and the grey is not grey paint at all. It is made of small separate flecks of blue, rose and pale green set side by side, mixing into that overcast tone only in your eye. The jetty running out into the harbour had been enlarged about a decade earlier, in 1876, and it gives the scene its one long, calm horizontal.