The Lighthouse at Honfleur

In the spring of 1886 Seurat showed A Sunday on La Grande Jatte at the eighth and last Impressionist exhibition, and it caused an uproar, made him the head of a new movement, and left him drained. That summer he went to the Normandy coast at Honfleur to work quietly by the sea, and painted the harbour lighthouse and its jetty. Look closely and the whole surface is built from tiny separate dots of unmixed colour, laid side by side so that your eye does the blending at a distance. He even carried the dots out onto the painted border he added around the edge. He was 26 that summer, and had five more years to live.