Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte is an important painting by the French artist Georges Seurat. The painting is the most famous example of the style called Pointillism. In this style, instead of using brushstrokes, the painter places dots of color side by side. Seen from a distance, the colors are meant to blend in the viewer’s eye. The artist was influenced by optical theories of the period. Seurat believed that a scientific approach to color and painting could result in a harmonic, emotional canvas that would glow with intensity.
Seurat painted La Grande Jatte from 1884 to 1886. It portrays a Sunday afternoon crowd in a park on an island in the Seine River north of Paris, where middle-class and working-class people mingled during their leisure hours. Seurat showed these people standing, walking, sitting under trees, and boating. However, the painting gives an overall impression of stillness and suspended motion. The painter was influenced in this work by relief sculptures on the Parthenon in ancient Greece. This influence can be seen in the sculptural, still qualities of the figures as they are arranged with little pictorial depth across the surface of the painting.
Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte is a large painting, 6 feet 9 inches high by 10 feet 3/8 inch wide (2.06 by 3.06 meters). The painting hangs in the Art Institute of Chicago.
See also Seurat, Georges .
