A Fisherman

A Fisherman was among the coastal subjects Seurat painted during his summers at Grandcamp-Maisy and Honfleur in the mid-1880s, where he worked away from Paris on seascape and harbour studies that he brought back to the Salon des Indépendants. Fishermen — patient, still figures against moving water — suited Seurat's preference for poses of arrested movement and formal simplicity. These coastal figures also provided a contrast with the bourgeois leisure subjects of La Grande Jatte, suggesting that his new technique applied equally to working-class subjects outside the fashionable Seine pleasure grounds.

The figure is modelled through the controlled application of dots and short strokes, building form through optical colour mixing. The sea or riverbank behind creates the complementary tonal contrast Seurat required for figures to read clearly.