Seurat A Sunday Afternoon on the Isle of
La Grande Jatte
Artist: Georges Seurat (French b. 1859 d. 1891)
Date: 1884 - 1886
Dimensions: 6’10” x 10’1”
Medium: oil on canvas
Current location: The Art Institute of Chicago
Period: Modernism (pointillism)
Genre: no traditional genre; it is a scene of “urban leisure”

Quick Notes:
  • Seurat was the inventor of pointillism, also called divisionism or neo-Impressionism. He
    believed that the scientific study of optics advocated his approach. He used dots of pure
    color instead of brushstrokes. The dots of different colors placed next to one another
    were supposed to blend in the viewer’s eye rather than blending colors on the artist’s
    palette before they are applied to the canvas.
  • While his pointillist technique often creates effective and subtle areas of landscape, water,
    and shadow, it leads to unusually clunky human figures. Seurat's figures tend to look like
    automatons or department store manequins.
  • In addition to being a technical innovator, Seurat’s choice of subject matter was
    innovative as well. The Impressionists favored scenes of urban leisure, and Seurat’s
    painting of bustling weekend life on an island in the Seine is an excellent example of this
    theme.

Suggested Compare-Contrast Target:
  • Jean-Antoine Watteau, A Pilgrimage to Cythera


Writing Prompts:
  • Assess Seurat's use of the human figure. How comfortable is he with the figure?
  • Does Seurat's technique strengthen or diminish the illusion of recession into space
    (depth) in this painting?


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