Port-en-Bessin, Bridge and Port

Painted in 1888 and now at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, 'Port-en-Bessin, Bridge and Port' is one of six canvases Seurat produced at Port-en-Bessin, a small fishing harbour on the Normandy coast, during his summer campaign there in 1888. Between the completion of 'La Grande Jatte' in 1886 and his last works of 1890–91, these coastal series—Grandcamp (1885), Honfleur (1886), Port-en-Bessin (1888), Crotoy (1889), Gravelines (1890)—form a sustained investigation of maritime landscape through divisionism. The bridge and port architecture introduced geometric verticals and diagonals into the typically horizontal coastal compositions.

The harbour bridge provides a strong architectural form that cuts across the horizontal bands of sea and sky. Seurat builds both the stone structure and the water through small dots of systematically chosen colour. The warm stone against cool water creates a characteristic divisionist complementary contrast.