Saint-Palais, Bord De Mer 1902

Armand Guillaumin laid down this seascape, ‘Saint-Palais, Bord De Mer’, with oil on canvas, and it's all about how he built up the scene, stroke by stroke. The way the paint's applied, it's not trying to hide anything. You can see the individual marks, how he loaded the brush and pressed it to the canvas. Look at the rocks in the foreground. There's this real mix of warm yellows and oranges, fighting it out with cool greens and blues. The texture is scumbled, a bit rough, which gives it a lively, kind of vibrating feel, especially next to the flatter, smoother sea and sky above. It's almost like he's saying, "Here's the world, bit by bit, as I see it." Guillaumin reminds me a bit of Pissarro – that same dedication to capturing a place, the same commitment to just showing the process of seeing. And like all good painting, it asks more questions than it answers.