The Channel of Gravelines, Petit Fort Philippe

1890

Oil on canvas, 73.3 × 92.1 cm. Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields

A curving quay leads the eye across a channel to a white lighthouse. It is one of four harbor views from the artist's last summer.

A painted band of dots runs around the edge, turning red beside the green water and orange against the blue sky. The border becomes part of the color scheme.
The four harbor views were sent to the Les XX exhibition in Brussels in early 1891.
A sturdy bollard in the foreground replaces a two-masted boat seen in the oil study.
A tilted boat tied up below the lighthouse grew out of a hazy patch of dots in the study.
The series' original painted blue frames have not survived.

The small port sits where a river reaches the sea, on the coast near Belgium. Each summer the painter left his Paris studio to work alone in a quiet Channel town.

Image: Wikimedia Commons · PD-Art