Port-en-Bessin - Georges Seurat (France), 1888

In the summer of 1888, Georges Seurat worked in Port-en-Bessin, a small fishing village in Normandy. He painted six views of the seaport and its surrounding countryside. His intention was "to translate as exactly as possible the luminosity of the open air, with all its nuances." Although Seurat shared the Impressionists' goal of translating nature's light and color, he also wished to make Impressionism more precise. He wanted to replace its spontaneous, improvisational qualities with a more systematic, objective approach that could reflect the essential structures of a landscape, not just its transitory effects. To this end, Seurat developed an unusual new technique, variously called pointillism, divisionism, or Neo-Impressionism. He juxtaposed small dots of pigment according to his interpretation of scientific theories of color and optics. His followers, like Paul Signac, continued the pointillist style after Seurat's early death from pneumonia.