Le Bec du Hoc, Grandcamp

Painted in 1885 and now at the National Gallery in London, 'Le Bec du Hoc, Grandcamp' represents Seurat's first fully resolved coastal painting using the systematic colour principles he was developing toward pointillism. Grandcamp, on the Normandy coast near the Vire estuary, was Seurat's summer painting ground in 1885, and this dramatic rock promontory—Le Bec du Hoc—offered a powerful natural form against which to test his evolving divisionist technique. The painting was exhibited at the eighth and final Impressionist exhibition in 1886 alongside 'A Sunday on La Grande Jatte,' marking Seurat's decisive public debut. The rock's scale and the sea's horizontal sweep are rendered through scientifically controlled small strokes of divided colour.

Seurat divides the cliff face into strokes of warm sunlit tones and cool shadow tones, applied separately to allow optical mixing. The sea is rendered in horizontal bands of blue, green, and white. The precise geometry of the rock against sky and sea gives the composition a monumental stillness.