Quatre bateaux à Grandcamp

In the summer of 1885 Seurat put down the huge canvas of Parisians on the island of La Grande Jatte that he had been working on for a year, and went to Grandcamp, a fishing village on the Normandy coast. It was the first time he painted the sea, and it turned into a habit. Every summer after that he took a different port on the Channel.

This is one of the small boards he worked on outdoors there, oil on wood, 16 by 25 centimetres, four boats lying at anchor. Panels this size are known as his croquetons, little sketches.

What he found in that light went back to Paris with him. He picked the big picture up again in October and began working over its surface in small separate touches of unmixed colour, and he was still at it the following winter. It had not been painted that way to begin with.