Georges Seurat

1. Georges Seurat 1859-1891 French Post-Impressionist Pointillism

2. Pointillism • Pointillism is a style of painting in which small distinct points of primary colors create the impression of a wide selection of secondary and intermediate colors. * Primary: Yellow, Blue, Red * Secondary: Orange, Green, Violet * Intermediary: Red-Orange, Yellow-Orange, etc. Detail from Seurat's La Parade (1889), showing the contrasting dots of paint used in pointillism.

3. Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, 1884-1886, The Art Institute of Chicago Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte shows members of each of the social classes participating in various park activities. The tiny juxtaposed dots of multi-colored paint allow the viewer's eye to blend colors optically, rather than having the colors blended on the canvas or pre-blended as a material pigment.

4. Seurat spent two years painting it, focusing scrupulously on the landscape of the park. He reworked the original as well as completed many preliminary drawings and oil sketches. He would go and sit in the park and make numerous sketches of the various figures in order to perfect their form. He concentrated on the issues of color, light, and form. The painting is approximately 6 feet 8 inches x 10 feet 10 inches, and in the permanent collection of the Art Institute of Chicago.

5. The Circus is unfinished, the last painting before he died at the age of 31 of an unknown medical cause.Click and zoom in to see how much this looks like a Japanese print up close. Can you see the upward-moving lines in the people?

6. Scientific methods • See page 114 of your text - Method Painting. • It explains Seurat’s theory, considered rather scientific, on how to create an emotional reaction in a painting. Do you think it is valid? • In the theme on the right, we see the lines moving upwards, and the warm colors. Do you think these are making this scene look gay and active? What does Seurat use to balance, or neutralize the positive elements?

7. Gray weather:Grande Jatte, 1888, Philadelphia Museum of Art 28 by 34 inches The color in Gray Weather seems more balanced than The Circus, with some upwards movement, but cool colors to offset the warm, and lateral lines for stability. In le Grande Jatte we see a lot of downwards curving lines, which denote what? What other devices does he use, and what is he trying to convey - action, happiness, sadness, calm, or stasis (no movement)? How does he do this?

8. Le Pont de Courbevoie, 1886-87 Oil on canvas, 18 x 21 1/2 in., Courtauld Institute, London

9. Bathers at Asnières was done in 1884, before Seurat created his Pointillist technique, though he has started to use dots of color in the boy’s hat, and a few other places, after the canvas was finished.

10. The Channel of Gravelines, Grand Fort-Philippe, 1890 The National Gallery, London (several works by Seurat) Seurat regularly spent his summers on the Channel coast and, in his last years, produced more than twenty major canvases of its harbours and seascapes.