The Lighthouse at Honfleur

• Georges Seurat (1859–1891)
• 1886
• Conté crayon heightened with gouache on laid paper
• Robert Lehman Collection, 1975
• (1975.1.705)

In 1886, Georges Seurat traveled to Honfleur, the old port town in northern Normandy where artists such as Eugène Boudin had long worked. There, he produced many views of the lighthouse. At dusk, in a hushed atmosphere, a fishing boat with its sail billowing enters the harbor, guided by the beacon on the jetty. Seurat conveyed form not through line but through tonal gradations of conté crayon, and he heightened the lighthouse beam with a touch of opaque white gouache.