View of the Port, Saint-Briac

Saint-Briac is a small Breton coastal village, and Signac painted this view of its port in 1885 — the same year he was working closely with Seurat as they developed the divisionist system together. This early work may represent one of his first applications of the emerging Neo-Impressionist method to a Breton coastal subject. Seurat and Signac made several painting trips to Brittany and Normandy in the mid-1880s, the rugged Atlantic coast offering subjects very different from the Parisian suburban landscapes that also occupied them during this formative period. Now in Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen.

At this early date Signac's brushwork is closer to Impressionist practice than his later systematic divisionism. The valley landscape is rendered with varied stroke directions and sizes showing sensitivity to different surfaces without yet applying a uniform divisionist dot.