Dockside at Honfleur by Georges Seurat

This is an invitation to travel. Seurat might almost have had in mind these lines by Baudelaire:

See, on the canals
Those sleeping vessels
Of vagabond spirit.

With its masts and cables, this swift courser of the high seas, the heavy ship with dark hull at the center of the canvas, seems already laden, ready to depart once more for faraway ports. The ship in the right foreground, however, tied with cables to the stanchion, makes one think of a slave in chains.

Emile Verhaeren owned this picture as well as The Poorhouse and Light-house at Honfleur. Referring to the work shown here, Seurat wrote him in January, 1887: "I have left your canvas in the same frame you saw it in." Concerning the title, he comments:

A bit of dockside - but not just any bit, any dock .... If I remember correctly, I must have written the title of your painting in blue pastel on the back of the canvas, the very day you came to see me.

In another letter, in reply to a remark made by the Belgian poet on this canvas, Seurat wrote:

I agree with you : The Lighthouse took me two months to paint, The Dockside only eight days. In fact, I remember mentioning this when I gave you the painting. I consider this one a big sketch. So we'll agree on a friendly price.