This scholarly and beautifully illustrated catalogue charts the evolution of the radical and distinctive style of French artist Georges Seurat through the recurring motif of the sea. It accompanies a major exhibition at The Courtauld, London – the first-ever dedicated to Seurat’s seascapes and the first devoted to the artist in the UK in almost 30 years. 
  
Georges Seurat (1859–1891) is best known as the creator of the Neo-Impressionist technique, in which shapes and light are rendered by juxtaposing small dots of pure colour. Seurat and the Sea brings together paintings, oil sketches and drawings made during the five summers he spent on the northern coast of France between 1885 and 1890. Working in port towns along the English Channel – including Honfleur, Port-en-Bessin and Gravelines – Seurat captured their seascapes, regattas and port activity in his luminous, atmospheric style.
 
These coastal works are an important counterpoint to his better-known Parisian scenes. Seurat sought, in his words, “to wash his eyes of the days spent in the studio [in Paris] and to translate in the most faithful manner the bright clarity, in all its nuances”. By focusing on this key aspect of his practice, Seurat and the Sea offers new insight into the development of his singular approach to colour, light and form, and reveals the importance of the seascapes in disseminating the artist’s work beyond the monumental canvases for which he is best known. 
 
Due to his untimely death at the age of 31, Seurat left behind a small but extraordinarily influential body of work. Works from The Courtauld – which holds the largest collection of his work in the UK, thanks to the vision of collector and founder Samuel Courtauld – are joined by loans from around the world.