Beach at Gravelines

Beach at Gravelines (1890) belongs to the series of four major paintings Seurat produced at Gravelines during his final summer of coastal painting. The extreme openness of the flat Flemish coast, with its wide beaches and enormous sky, pushed his use of horizontal composition to its furthest extent. These paintings, with their near-total absence of incident, concentrate the viewer's attention entirely on the optical experience of the pointillist surface. Seurat died the following March, making the Gravelines series a melancholy last testament to his method. Courtauld Gallery, London.

The nearly empty composition — a strip of sand, distant sea, sky — is covered in finely regulated dots of blue, green, and orange-pink. The painted border, itself a band of dots, integrates the framing into the colour system. The effect is of shimmering, silent coastal light.