Portrieux, the lighthouse

Lighthouses appear regularly in Signac's seascapes as both practical and symbolic structures — guides through dangerous waters whose beams measure the rhythmic passage of time. This 1888 view of the Portrieux lighthouse is a companion subject to the jetty view from the same year and location. The lighthouse as pictorial subject had featured in Dutch marine painting and in the work of Constable and Turner before French painters took it up; Signac's treatment gives it the systematic Neo-Impressionist surface treatment that connects it to tradition while marking it as formally innovative.

The lighthouse tower provides a strong vertical that organises the composition against the horizontal sea and sky. Signac renders the stone structure with cooler, less saturated divisionist touches than the surrounding water, suggesting different surface qualities.