Eliseu Meifrén acquired a small house in Port Lligat in 1886, near Cadaqués. From this moment, he made this fisherman’s village one of the principal themes of his painting, before other artists such as Salvador Dalí, Pablo Picasso, André Breton and Marcel Duchamp expressed interest in the landscape decades afterwards. Meifrén particularly focused on producing nocturnal landscapes of the locality, making use of the pale lunar light projected on the clouds, the sea, and the fishermen’s houses. By the same token, dusk is also a regular feature in the landscapes of Port Lligat. In these works, chromatic nuances are taken to an extreme to create strong, romantic contrasts of colour, leaving aside the Impressionist principles that Meifrén sometimes incorporated into his work.

Port Lligat is a work that surely encapsulates this artistic period. In this composition, the sun is shrouded by a veil of pale white, lavender and bluish clouds that blend into the background and delimit or transform the elements of the landscape, projecting them onto the still water of the bay. This detailed study of natural light and its effects generates a mysterious and almost mystical atmosphere. Meifrén used short brushstrokes to develop the rhythms of colour from the sun towards the water and other elements. The only elements that he defines with more precision are the two small boats in the foreground which emerge from the right, and whose silhouette against the reflection of the sun on the sea creates an attractive contrast.

This large format work is a paradigmatic example of the pictorial result of Meifrén’s artistic campaigns in Cadaqués, Port Lligat and Port de la Selva. Without doubt, he was one of the Catalan artists who best captured the sky and its chromatic effects at the different moments of the day. He was one of the most valued painters on the Spanish artistic circuit throughout his career, as well as after his death.