SEURAT, Georges

This painting is a study for Seurat’s famous painting (now in the Art Institute of Chicago) which was shown at the 1886 Impressionist exhibition in Paris.

This painting, shown at the last Impressionist exhibition in 1886, served as the manifesto of Neo-Impressionism. Seurat adopted certain elements of the Impressionist tradition (he made outdoor colour studies and he retained the light tonality of the Impressionist palette), but his training took place well away from the protagonists of modern art, following a highly personal course from the outset. He took up colour by reading scientific books on optical phenomena. In the scientific literature a number of principles were formulated that subsequently formed the theoretical base of Neo-Impressionism: the distinction between hue and tone (or colour and value)), the idea of the optical mixing effected by the retina, and the coloured vibrations obtained by juxtaposing different tones of the same hue.

In Neo-Impressionism the conflict between representation and abstraction was glaring. The tendency to treat figures as coloured silhouettes reached its height in A Sunday Afternoon on the Ile de la Grande Jatte in which “the stiffness of the characters and the incisive shapes help to generate the sound of modernity.”

In this best-known and largest painting, Georges Seurat depicted people relaxing in a suburban park on an island in the Seine River called La Grande Jatte. The artist worked on the painting in several campaigns, beginning in 1884 with a layer of small horizontal brushstrokes of complementary colours. He later added small dots, also in complementary colours, that appear as solid and luminous forms when seen from a distance. Seurat made the final changes to La Grande Jatte in 1889. He restretched the canvas in order to add a painted border of red, orange, and blue dots that provides a visual transition between the interior of the painting and his specially designed white frame.

This crayon study is a preparatory for Seurat’s most famous painting, A Sunday afternoon on La Grande Jatte (Art Instiitute of Chicago). This painting depicts a scene of Parisians enjoying their day off on an island in the Seine. Seurat, who wanted to make the art of painting objective and systematic, completed at least 32 preparatory drawings and oil sketches for the painting, often working out individual figures in separate drawings.

This painting is a study for Seurat’s famous painting A Sunday Afternoon at the Ile de la Grande Jatte (now in the Art Institute of Chicago) which was shown at the 1886 Impressionist exhibition in Paris.

In his tiny oils, done in sketchy brush-strokes on wood panels, Seurat strikingly often used dark figures silhouetted against light backgrounds, and linear elements to structure his space.

The Bathers at Asni�res, at two by three metres a demonstratively large work, was Seurat’s first programmatic picture. The location was not far out, like Argenteuil or Bougival, but close to newly built factories. There was no restaurant, and those who bathed there went because the rail fare to Argenteuil was too expensive. Fourteen surviving oil studies and a number of drawings show how meticulously Seurat prepared the painting. The atmosphere one of hazy brightness, the sky and water almost constitute a single colour continuum, which powerfully diminishes the spatiality of the work. The figures look exhausted, their three-dimensionality has an inflated look, and the outlines of the colour zones are sharp. These outlines are not marked by actual lines, though, but solely by the different colours of tiny brush-strokes or by an aura of light.

The scientifically precise rendering of colours of this carefree genre scene and sunny landscape admittedly introduces a disquieting note of ornamentality, involving as it does the uncompromising use of a technique that has no time for unimportant details.

Seurat practiced painting landscapes drenched in light by doing form and colour studies of fields of flowers near Paris and curious cliff formations on the coast of Normandy, such as the Bec du Hoc.

In the mid-1880 the depiction of suburban pleasures favoured by the Impressionists gave way to pictures of urban entertainment, as writers, poets, and songwriters turned to acrobats, clowns, and caf� singers for subject matter. Seurat’s interest in urban entertainment culminated in Circus Sideshow. The scene is a sideshow given in the evening on the street to lure passersby into purchasing tickets to the circus. But instead of being gay and festive, the performance is calm and brooding. Using a fine brush, Seurat has covered the canvas with a myriad of dark violet-blue, orange, and green dots of paint. Although his research in optics was purportedly scientific, the forms are endowed with mystery. Figures seem to levitate in the moody gaslight, musicians and performers are eerily geometric and alienated from the audience, and railings suggest ramps that lead nowhere. In this world where nothing is certain to the eye, Seurat implies a parity between fact and fantasy.

Circus Sideshow represents the first important painting Seurat devoted to a scene of popular entertainment. In effect, it sets the stage for his last great figure compositions, La Chahut of 1889–90 (Kr�ller-M�ller Museum, Otterlo) and Circus of 1890–91 (Mus�e d’Orsay, Paris).

Using a fine brush, Seurat has covered the canvas with a myriad of dark violet-blue, orange, and green dots of paint. Although his research in optics was purportedly scientific, the forms are endowed with mystery.

This painting is a study for Seurat’s famous painting A Sunday Afternoon at the Ile de la Grande Jatte (now in the Art Institute of Chicago) which was shown at the 1886 Impressionist exhibition in Paris.

This small panel is a study for the large painting Le Chahut.

In 1887-90 Seurat was working on the Circus Parade, Le Chahut and the not quite finished Circus. It was a Degas world. The effects of stage lighting, overlapping and cropped foreground figures, and a certain malice in the grotesque way types of people or posture are presented, are related to Degas. However, the differences are greater: a sense of ceremony accompanied by distortions and grimaces, motion arrested in mechanical parallel attitudes, a strict patterning of spaces, and an emphatically enigmatic flavour despite the seemingly straightforward attention-getting.

This small panel is a study for the large painting The Models. In the studies to The Models, Seurat affords a glimpse of his studio and the artist’s work. Waiting amidst discarded clothing, or dressing, these lean and altogether unerotic nudes are related to the completed Grand Jatte.

This small panel is a study for the large painting The Models. In the studies to The Models, Seurat affords a glimpse of his studio and the artist’s work. Waiting amidst discarded clothing, or dressing, these lean and altogether unerotic nudes are related to the completed Grand Jatte.

This small panel is a study for the large painting The Models. In the studies to The Models, Seurat affords a glimpse of his studio and the artist’s work. Waiting amidst discarded clothing, or dressing, these lean and altogether unerotic nudes are related to the completed Grand Jatte.

This small panel is a study for the large painting The Models. In the studies to The Models, Seurat affords a glimpse of his studio and the artist’s work. Waiting amidst discarded clothing, or dressing, these lean and altogether unerotic nudes are related to the completed Grand Jatte.

This study for the Bathers at Asni�res depicts a white and a black horse in the Seine.

Although this painting was still not completed at the painter’s early death in 1891, Seurat had already exhibited it that year in the Salon des Ind�pendents. It was intended to bring home clearly the principles of his art that he had developed in the previous ten years and at the same time to emphasize his leading role in modern painting.

The circus was that of the Cirque Fernando, not far from Seurat’s studio. To clarify his depiction Seurat left most of the seats empty behind the artiste riding into the arena The work has something of the quality of a poster.

The Cirque Fernando had its pitch on the Boulevard Rochechouart. In 1894 it was redesigned as a theatre. Included among its regular guests were Lautrec, and also Degas, Renoir and Seurat, who decorated the rooms with their paintings.

Although this painting was still not completed at the painter’s early death in 1891, Seurat had already exhibited it that year in the Salon des Ind�pendents. It was intended to bring home clearly the principles of his art that he had developed in the previous ten years and at the same time to emphasize his leading role in modern painting.

The circus was that of the Cirque Fernando, not far from Seurat’s studio. To clarify his depiction Seurat left most of the seats empty behind the artiste riding into the arena The work has something of the quality of a poster.

The Cirque Fernando had its pitch on the Boulevard Rochechouart. In 1894 it was redesigned as a theatre. Included among its regular guests were Lautrec, and also Degas, Renoir and Seurat, who decorated the rooms with their paintings.

The present painting is the small version of the composition. The large version (200 x 250 cm) is in the Barnes Foundation, Merion, Pennsylvania. The lean and altogether unerotic nudes are related to the completed Grand Jatte, which is partly to be seen on the studio wall.

This painting is a study for Seurat’s famous painting A Sunday Afternoon at the Ile de la Grande Jatte (now in the Art Institute of Chicago) which was shown at the 1886 Impressionist exhibition in Paris.

The buxom young woman powdering herself in this painting is the artist’s lover, Madeleine Knobloch. of whose existence only his closest friends were aware.