La rade de Grandcamp by Georges Seurat

La rade de Grandcamp was exhibited at the last Impressionist exhibition in the late spring of 1886 and again that fall with the Indépendants, both times alongside Le Bec du Hoc, Grandcamp. These were the first exhibitions in which Georges Seurat showed more than one landscape canvas; many reviewers preferred rhythm to his controversial La Grande Jatte. Lke that huge figure painting, the landscapes rivaled Impressionist works in both technique and composition.

La rade de Grandcamp takes up the theme of pleasure boating that Monet and Manet had frequently treated in the 1870s. Seaports hoping to attract vacationers and tourists encouraged regattas, which were often the highlights of the summer season. In Seurat's painting, the hedge and clump of trees separate two groups of boats, but this interruption seems to enhance rather than diminish their processional movement from left to right. It is not a day of brilliant sunshine but instead, a typical Channel day when the sun does not quite dissipate the gray haze. We look out upon the boats from near the enclosure of a garden, so this picture suggests the sociable pleasures of summer at the shore. It generates a mood quite different from the isolation of Le Bec du Hoc, Grandcamp.

La rade de Grandcamp was probably the first canvas Seurat undertook during the summer of 1885. Its more varied brushwork places it closer to the Impressionists than other Grandcamp pictures. This painting is a key work in the founding of the Neo-Impressionist movement, at one of the decisive moments in the evolution of early modernist painting.