Port en Bessin, Outer Harbor at High Tide by Georges Seurat

The sea has receded and with it its assault against dry land has been temporarily removed. In front of the stone breakwater and the houses, a slimy tidal flat has been exposed. Though full of life, this is the sea in its least impressive aspect.

What is given here is another of those great silences Seurat was so good at expressing in his landscapes. It communicates tranquillity and, like others of them, fills the viewer with a kind of contentment. The absence of people has something to do with this.

The work shown here is built up in horizontal layers-the sea wall, the breakwaters, the horizon line, the sky.

This is a delicate work more nearly suggested than stated, perhaps even a bit understated, but the colors and tonalities have persuasive charm. With his Pointillist technique ( even the signature is "beaded''), Seurat succeeds in giving universality to his subject, objectifying it enough so that we forget, not the name of the place ( he was anxious to remind us of it), but any too narrowly regional associations. The work might as aptly, or perhaps even more aptly, be titled "Low Tide."