Seurat, Georges, << suh RAH, zhawrzh >> (1859-1891), a French artist, was one of the inventors and chief painters of a painting style called Pointillism. The style is also called Divisionism or Neoimpressionism. In Pointillism, the painter tries to represent the activity of light and unify the picture by the interplay of colors. Instead of using brushstrokes, the painter places dots of pure color side by side. Seen from a distance, the colors are meant to blend in the viewer’s eye.
Seurat’s most famous painting, Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (1886), is one of his first Pointillist works. It shows a Sunday afternoon crowd on an island in the Seine River north of Paris. There, middle-class people, working-class people, and prostitutes mingle. Seurat showed these people standing, walking, sitting under trees, fishing, or boating. However, the painting gives an overall impression of stillness and suspended motion. Seurat carefully planned the painting’s composition. The forms of the figures are large and simplified, showing little texture or facial detail. Instead, Seurat focused his attention on the observation of light and color.
Seurat’s most frequent subjects were the entertainments of Paris and its suburbs. He also painted seascapes in Normandy each summer between 1885 and 1889. He used Pointillism to describe the effect of light on the landscape and water.
Seurat was born on Dec. 2, 1859, in Paris. In 1876, he began his exploration of optical formulas for painting. His first major work, A Bathing Place, Asnieres, was shown at the first Salon des Independants exhibition in 1884. At this exhibition, Seurat met the French painter Paul Signac. Seurat and Signac developed Pointillism in 1885 and 1886. Seurat died on March 29, 1891, at the age of 31 of a sudden illness, possibly meningitis.
See also Painting (Postimpressionism) ; Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte .
