Seurat's Painting The Lighthouse at Honfleur
Matt Stover

After the advent of Impressionism there was a movement to further its concepts. This new movement, Neo-Impressionism, or peinture optique, was led by the innovative painter Georges Seurat. Amidst the heyday of this style of art, Seurat produced The Lighthouse at Honfleur while relaxing during the summer at this coastal resort town. Seurat, a student of optics, blended colors on canvas by placing tiny dots in close proximity to each other. Many artists have since imitated this method, known as the pointillist technique, but none have garnered as much acclaim as Seurat. The pointillist style of painting is a notoriously slow one. Some of Seurat's works were said to have taken him two years to complete. It sometimes took him this long to find the right combination of different shades of colors to create the desired effect on the object he was representing. For many of his paintings he would first sketch single objects or people to be included in a bigger painting. During these he would develop his color scheme and modify it as needed before beginning the larger work. Seurat's painting The Lighthouse at Honfleur displays his affinity to his homeland's water bodies as well as the further development of his ability to use optics to show color and texture.

This oil on canvas piece is a depiction of one of the beaches at the mouth of the Seine River "looking east towards Le Havre" in a French town called Honfleur. It is here where Seurat spent a summer painting six landscapes. Other renowned artists before him had portrayed the particular view he used for this painting. Boudin, Jongkind, Lepine, and Monet had all painted this scene before. In its center is a prominent lighthouse out on the edge of a small peninsula. To its right are several brick buildings that are the local Hospice quarters. These are painted using shades of blue and red giving the building a purplish hue. An old dilapidated shipyard is to the right of this with a few lower buildings on the edge of the painting. In the shipyard there is a boat resting in the sand with an unused sawhorse closer to the foreground. To the right of the sawhorse lies a broken transport wheel that leans against something beyond the frame of the picture. In the bottom right of the piece appears to be another wooden piece of equipment that was also left in the sand. Most immediately in the foreground is a sparse mound of dune grass that fades in and out up and down the slope of the tiny hill. Towards the left of the painting is the Seine River. It is painted using whites, blues, greens, and a few oranges. Towards the horizon a lone hazy looking sailboat heads north. Beyond it you can see the slight incline of land on the other side of the river. If you look to the left of the lighthouse you see part of the shore that is being held up by a manmade embankment. It has the look of a brown picket fence with green hills rolling behind it. Almost on the point of this embankment is a small vertical structure that is indistinguishable. On the whole, the painting seems to have minute spots of black that provide it with texture.

Seurat, in his 6 landscapes of Honfleur, seems to be expressing his mood with his color scheme. His paintings of Honfleur have a relaxing softness due to these color choices. They, for the most part, convey the idea of peaceful living that Seurat must have been experiencing during the summer vacation in which he created these pieces. Particularly, in the Lighthouse at Honfleur, he uses light blues to express a warm lazy day on the riverside. The Shore at Bas-Butin, the "Maria" at Honfleur, the End of the Jetty, A Corner of the Harbor, and Evening at Honfleur all have many of the same soothing qualities. In none of the paintings are waves crashing to shore nor is the wind forcefully blowing something. Another strange thing to note is that in none of the Honfleur paintings is there the easily recognizable shape of a human being. Maybe Seurat sees crowds of people as causes of stress and therefore never incorporates them into his Honfleur works. It is possible that this is the reason why there's an innate calmness to the six paintings.

The sand in some of these paintings also contributes to this feeling with its smoothness and gradual inclines further up onto shore. In the Lighthouse at Honfleur, Seurat also uses light to make the entire painting seem to glow in front of you. I don't believe it's a coincidence that the light he uses illuminates one side of the lighthouse while leaving the other side dark. This light, however, does not cause noticeable shadows on any other structures or objects. It's as if he's trying to make the lighthouse stand out by making it more naturalistic with respect to shadows. The lighthouse is the only object in this painting that is significantly shaded to show where the light is coming from. Otherwise you wouldn't know from where the sun is shining. You would expect the hospice buildings or the boat to cast even a slight shadow to the left of them but they don't. The reason that the lighthouse may be meant to stand out is that Seurat wanted it to convey a sense of the new. It is also believed that he had the same intention for the sailboat as well .

In this respect, Seurat also shows the hospice and shipyard in less than optimum condition. The shipyard especially seems rundown with trash and parts left all around. The hospice also has a darkened overall tone giving some reference to its age. It is displayed with no ornamentation and seems primarily only to serve a purpose rather than to intrigue the viewer. This could also just be the way the scene actually looks in life. It might also be possible that Seurat was creating a small timeline from old to new when going right to left of the painting.

The lighthouse, in contrast to the hospice and shipyard, has a new look about it with an almost shiny parapet at the top. Seurat, in showing the lighthouse in such a naturalistic way, may have been "intending to show the future as harmony and the imagined golden age." After looking initially at the majestic lighthouse your eyes are then drawn past it and slightly to the left towards the opposite shore and sailboat. This seems to back up Seurat's view of the future and what may lie ahead after exploring the 'opposite shore.' In real life Honfleur was an important port, but it ultimately lost out in prosperity to Le Havre. This could explain Seurat's decision to show the old and new in the same landscape thereby telling a history of the location.

Overall, this painting doesn't have a lot of balance. There is an abundance of manmade structures as well as land to the right side of the painting. The lighthouse while slightly off-center to the left doesn't adequately balance the work. However, Seurat does achieve a certain balance in his use of predominately horizontal structures and land features that are counterbalanced by the lighthouse that is the painting's lone vertical structure. This may also serve to emphasize the lighthouse's significance.

Seurat undoubtedly has a patriotic pride in his homeland's water bodies, most notably France's rivers. He painted more than 65 depictions of his native country's waterways. His pride in them is evident in his portrayals. Oftentimes, children are playing in them or some type of leisure activity is taking place beside them. In other works, the water bodies are simply shown in a quiet solitary state. Never in any of his paintings are the waves violently crashing to shore. The water also never seems choppy or unsteady; rather it is predictable and inviting. In particular, the water in The Lighthouse at Honfleur is shown as a pacifying green that gently carries away the sailboat in the background. In addition, the Seine never appears dirty. Most of the time, the rivers in Seurat's works seem to sparkle in the sunlight, a further indication of Seurat's pride. These paintings could easily be put in travel brochures advertising for people to come to France. For instance, in such paintings as the Beach at Bas-Butin, the water is such a clear blue that it gives you the impression that you can see the bottom. In this respect, The Lighthouse at Honfleur is another example of this pride.

Seurat is well known for his unique pointillistic technique. His work bred an entire artistic style aptly named neo-impressionism. Though Seurat's style of painting is different, its origins are undeniably linked to Impressionism. Robert Herbert (a respected art critic) said "echoes of Monet [a prominent Impressionist painter] can be found in the paintings he did during his first two summers in the Honfleur region." The paintings he did there were done well after he had established his new style as one very separate from impressionism. Impressionism's showy displays of painterly qualities are reflected in Seurat's work. The brushstrokes within the tiny dots in his paintings can be noticed not only as having different sizes but also having differing directions in which they were applied. The telltale brushwork makes it easy to pick out which paintings are Seurat's just as it does with most Impressionist artists. It gives some objects hazy boundaries much like that in Impressionism. Another impressionist quality that Seurat retains is the fact that many of the paintings are capturing a certain distance of view or feeling at a specific time or place. For instance, the Lighthouse at Honfleur when viewed from about ten feet back does not appear to be very painterly. It also catches the mood of a peaceful summer day in the manner in which it is painted. Lastly, Seurat shares with impressionistic works the similarity that neither has the direct goal of being as naturalistic as possible. Instead, they capture a moment rather than a photograph in time.

Seurat also used The Lighthouse at Honfleur for his aim of discovering a more perfect way of using the eye's biological tendencies to represent a place at a certain time. Seurat, was renowned for his research into optics and did not mind being "perceived as a technician of art, who borrowed from science some of the signs of authority." Seurat read from many optical research papers to better understand the working of the eye and to further improve his work. He even spoke with Charles Henry, author of the book Introduction a une Esthetique, to gain additional insight into optical illusion. With each painting Seurat was improving his technique making the colors mesh together more completely. "He even referred to his major paintings as "toiles de recherches et si possible de conquete" (or research canvases, conquests if possible)." His confidante Felix Feneon remarked, "From picture to picture the Neo-impressionist artists have affirmed their method, increased their observation, and clarified their science." It is observed in Seurat's painting of The Lighthouse at Honfleur that his method of showing colors was not yet perfected. His portrayal of the hospice makes the brick have a purplish tone and he does not adequately develop an edge of the building. Another small improvement could be made on the sawhorse's color. Here the dots could be made smaller so as to serve the viewer from a closer and further view. This is additional proof that Seurat was still honing his skills in manufacturing colors from his pointillist technique. All of the paintings he completed in the summer of 1886 "had the small dot appear as the dominant structural element rather than as an afterthought" unlike in his more famous work La Grande Jatte.

Seurat also used the paintings at Honfleur especially of the lighthouse, to test his theory of expressive lines. He felt in particular that ascending lines tend to be expressive of gaity while horizontal lines induce a feeling of calmness. Consistent with this theory, The Lighthouse at Honfleur has many horizontal lines due to the horizon, shoreline and embankment. This would explain the mood the viewer gets when looking at this painting. This is another way Seurat was learning to better represent his perspective with his paintings.

Georges Seurat, in painting the Lighthouse at Honfleur displayed two important tendencies. First, he was showing his pride in his country's waterways and secondly, he was practicing and improving his pointillist technique. He showed his pride in France's waters in the many works he painted of them by the condition in which he portrayed them. His improvement in using his unique style of painting is not only documented chronologically in his works but is also evidenced in quotes from Seurat himself. Finally, The Lighthouse at Honfleur was an exemplary painting by an innovative artist who used it to not only solidify his style but also to further his own artistic development.

Bibliography

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Herbert, Robert. Georges Seurat: 1859-1891. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1991.

Homer, William. Seurat and the Science of Painting Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1964.

Hutton, John. "Neo-impressionism and the search for solid ground: Art, Science, and Anarchism in Fin-de-Siecle, France." Art Bulletin 120 (1997): 4-7.

Madeleine-Perdrillat, Alain. Seurat New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 1990.

Rewald, John. Seurat: A Biography New York: Harry N. Adams Inc., 1990.