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PROPERTY FORMERLY FROM THE SANDBLOM COLLECTION

1859-1891
LE PORT DE HONFLEUR

LE PORT DE HONFLEUR

measurements
9 by 12 in.

alternate measurements
23 by 30.5 cm

Executed in 1886.

Crayon conté on paper

PROVENANCE

Charles Vignier, Paris

Eduard von der Heydt, Zandvoort

Alfred Flechtheim, Berlin

de Hauke and Co., New York (by 1929)

Knoedler Gallery, New York (before 1943)

Grace and Philip Sandblom (by 1954)

EXHIBITED

New York, De Hauke & Co., Inc., Exhibition of Watercolors and Drawings by 19th century contemporary French artists, 1929, no. 23

Providence, R.I., The Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, 1930-31, no. 38

New York, Buchholz Gallery (Curt Valentin), Seurat Drawings, 1947, no. 9

New York, Knoedler Gallery, Seurat, 1949, no. 49

Liljevalchs, Konsthall, Fran Cézanne till Picasso, 1954

Copenhagen, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Grace og Philip Sandbloms Samling, 1959, no. 45

Göteborgs Konstmuseum, Fran Delacroix till de Staël, Grace och Philip Sandbloms Samling, 1964, no. 61

Stockholm, Nationalmuseum, The Grace and Philip Sandblom Collection, 1981

Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, and Kunsthause Zürich, Georges Seurat Drawings, 1983-84, no. 76

LITERATURE

John Rewald, Georges Seurat, New York, 1943, pl. 22, illustrated

Germain Seligman, The Drawings of Seurat, New York, 1947, no. 16, illustrated pl. 13

Henri Dorra and John Rewald, Seurat, Paris, 1959, no. 162a, illustrated p. 190

C. M. de Hauke, Seurat et son oeuvre, Paris, 1964, no. 657, illustrated p. 234

Pierre Courthion, Georges Seurat, New York, 1989, illustrated p. 62

NOTE

Conté crayon was Seurat's preferred medium between 1882 and 1886. In most of these drawings, as in the present work, the solid shapes are made exclusively by subtle variations of light and dark. While in his paintings Seurat obtained luminosity by the use of divided color, in the drawings he depended upon what he called 'irradiation': the arbitrary manipulation of chiaroscuro in order to make a form stand out by contrast with its neighbor. Such uses of shading were known to Leonardo da Vinci and many other artists, but never before had they been carried to the borders of abstraction.

In this work, individual lines are gone: no incidental movements along the surfaces break up the evenly modulated masses that delineate the landscape and the solitary figure. Seurat's mastery of chiaroscuro techniques lends this composition a sense of introspection and poetic melancholy. Each boat posseses its own space and solidarity. This work is a study for the celebrated oil Entrée du Port de Honfleur (1886), which is part of the collection of the Barnes Foundation in Merion, Pennsylvania.