Seurat spends the last summer of his short life in the harbour town of Gravelines, just south of Dunkirk. He makes four paintings of the canal – on canvasses of the same size, but from varying angles and in different light. He deliberately seems to have chosen a different time of day for all of them in order to depict the changing light in the course of the day. He does use a uniform and delicate pointillé for all four works. He often applies smaller dots in the centre of bigger ones. This enables him to apply well-considered contrasts and accents. The result is a pure, soft and diffuse light.
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