The 'Per-Kiridy' at high tide, 1889

By 1889 van Rysselberghe had a particular Seurat fixed in his mind. Two years earlier Les XX, the Brussels exhibition society he helped run, had shown Seurat's Le Bec du Hoc, Grandcamp, a French headland built entirely from tight divisionist dots. He carried that method out to the coast of Brittany and chose his own motif, a rock the locals call Per-Kiridy, painting it at high tide with the sea closed around the stone. Sky, water and rock are all laid in the same small separate touches of pure color. He was among the few Belgians who had brought the new French technique home, and this is one of the seascapes where he tested it against real water.