The Channel of Gravelines, Grand Fort-Philippe

Seurat spent the summer of 1890 at Gravelines, a small port on the Channel coast between Calais and Dunkirk, and came home with four canvases, eight little oil panels and a few drawings. This is the morning view from the dunes at Petit-Fort-Philippe, the tide out, the beach left wide and almost empty. He worked the composition out in front of the water and finished the painting that winter in his Paris studio. The band of dots around the edge is painted onto the canvas itself, a border he tuned colour by colour so that deep indigo meets the yellow of the sand. The Gravelines pictures went on show at the Indépendants in Paris in March 1891. This one stayed in private hands until 1995, when the National Gallery bought it from the Berlin dealer Heinz Berggruen.