Saint-Briac, Le Béchet

Saint-Briac, Le Béchet (1885) was painted the summer after Signac first encountered Seurat and began adopting the systematic divisionist method. Saint-Briac-sur-Mer in Brittany was a favourite early painting destination for Signac, who returned there multiple times in the mid-1880s. These Breton paintings mark the crucial transition from his earlier Impressionist-influenced work to the rigorous Neo-Impressionist style that would define his career. Dating from 1885, they appear on the very threshold of his maturity as a divisionist.

The Breton coastal landscape is rendered in early divisionist dot-work, the strokes more tentative and varied than the assured pointillism of his mid-1890s Saint-Tropez works. The palette is cooler and more muted than his Mediterranean paintings, reflecting Brittany's grey Atlantic light.