Seascape at Port-en-Bessin, Normandy by Georges Seurat

This is one of Seurat's most varied and sweeping landscapes, a contrast between sea and sky, heaviness and fluidity, under fringes of curlicue clouds. The steep drop of the land to the sea forms a diagonal that cuts across the picture from top left to bottom right.

The overall effect is rather baroque. The curve dominates. The only horizontal features are the line of the coast and the sea across the horizon.

The dot technique admirably suggests the vegetation on the cliff. The two verticals at the top left give the painting its dramatic appearance and despite their seeming fragility in this landscape, it is from them that the painting has derived its title.

The pigment is compact, sonorous, and very varied in treatment. The dots, big in the foreground, get tinier and tinier on the sea as they move away from us. The ray of sunshine on the dune at right amid encroaching shadow adds a note of joy.

Georges Seurat's signature on this work is barely legible. Seurat painted the border of this canvas after it had already been signed. He had made a painted border before doing so, then decided minor retouching was needed still. This was how his signature got partially painted over.