Entrance to the Port of Honfleur

Honfleur, at the mouth of the Seine on the Normandy coast, had been a site of artistic pilgrimage since Monet's early work there in the 1860s, and Signac's 1899 view of its port entrance continues this tradition. By 1899 Honfleur was already associated with the history of Impressionism through Monet's and Boudin's early visits, giving Signac's choice of subject a self-conscious historical dimension. The Indianapolis Museum of Art holds this work as part of their significant French nineteenth-century holdings.

The port entrance framing — water foreground, boats midground, town and sky beyond — is a conventional harbour composition to which Signac brings his systematic divisionist surface. The contrast between dark geometric forms and vibrant divisionist water is characteristic of his mature method.