Seurat spent the summer of 1886 in the resort town of Honfleur, on the northern French coast, a region of turbulent seas and rugged shorelines to which artists had long been attracted. But Seurat’s evening scene is hushed and still. Vast sky and tranquil sea bring a sense of spacious light to the picture yet also have a peculiar visual density. Long lines of cloud echo the breakwaters on the beach—signs of human life and order.
Seurat had used his readings of optical theory to develop a systematic technique, known as pointillism, that involves the creation of form out of small spots of pure color. In the viewer’s eye, these spots can both coalesce into shapes and remain separate particles, generating a magical shimmer. A contemporary critic described the light in Evening, Honfleur and related works as a “gray dust,” as if the transparency of the sky were filled with, or even constituted by, barely visible matter—a sensitive response to the paint’s movement between illusion and material substance.
Seurat painted a frame around the scene, buffering the transition between the world of the painting and reality. At the upper right, the spots on the frame grow lighter, lengthening the rays of the setting sun.
Publication excerpt from MoMA Highlights: 375 Works from The Museum of Modern Art, New York (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2019)
Seurat painted his view of the seashore using lots of little dots of color, which he placed right next to each other. Together, the dots make up objects like sailboats and buildings, as well as parts of the landscape like the sky. What other things can you see here? What colors would you choose to show this place in the evening?
Kids label from 2019, updated in 2023
The rough seas and rugged shoreline of the northern French coast had long attracted artists, including Georges-Pierre Seurat, who spent the summer of 1886 in this region in a resort town called Honfleur. He went to clear his vision, or, as he put it, to “wash the light of the studio” from his eyes. There he painted Evening, Honfleur, calming the turbulent shoreline in his peaceful sunset scene.
Seurat immersed himself in the science and study of optics, and contemporary writing on color theory, which helped him to develop the new approach to painting reflected in Evening, Honfleur. Systematic and measured, his technique involved the application of separate, distinct touches of unmixed color to form an image. In the viewer’s eye, these small points of color can both coalesce into coherent scenes and remain separate particles that seem to generate a shimmer over the composition. In reference to these dots of color, this technique became known as Pointillism.
Seurat meticulously applied at least 25 colors to Evening, Honfleur in thousands of individual dots. Long bands of clouds echo the horizon and the breakwaters on the beach. Sky and sea fill most of the composition, giving it a sense of vastness. Seurat added the wooden frame to his painting later, hand-painting it with the same Pointillist technique to suggest the extension of the image past the boundaries of the canvas. In the frame’s upper-right corner, the dots grow lighter, extending the glow of the setting sun.
