Le Sentier des Douanes

Le Sentier des Douanes — the customs officer's path — was the coastal footpath that ran along the Breton cliffs above the Atlantic, used by revenue officers monitoring for smuggling and beloved by painters for its dramatic coastal panoramas. Signac walked and painted along this path during his Atlantic coastal campaigns, and the subject connected him to the broader Post-Impressionist engagement with the Breton landscape that ran through Gauguin and the Pont-Aven school. The coastal path subject gave him high-horizon compositions with the sea filling much of the picture plane — an unusual compositional arrangement that suited his interest in the optical analysis of open water.

The high vantage point places the sea as the dominant element, with Signac's dots analyzing the Atlantic's complex color — neither the clear blue of the Mediterranean nor the grey of the Channel but a mixed, variable green-blue that changes with depth, weather, and angle of light. The coastal path provides a narrow land element in warm ochres along the upper edge of the sea.