Port-en-Bessin, avant-port, marée haute

Seurat spent the summer of 1888 at Port-en-Bessin, a small fishing harbor on the coast of Normandy, and came back with a whole series of the same port at different moments of the tide. This is the outer harbor at high water, the sea pushing in against the two stone jetties on the right. He built the whole thing from tiny separate dots of color, laid side by side so your eye does the mixing rather than his brush. Look at the edge of the canvas and you will find he even painted a dotted border, so the picture never quite touches its frame. Seurat was methodical and slow, and he did not have long. He died three years later, only 31.