Georges Seurat

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Born: 1859

Died: 1891

Color Theory: Past vs. Present

November 20, 2024

Summary of Georges Seurat

Georges Seurat is well known for pioneering the Neo-Impressionist style known as Divisionism, or Pointillism, which is characterised by a gently flickering surface of tiny dots or colour strokes. His inventions were inspired by new quasi-scientific theories about colour and expression, but the elegant beauty of his work may be attributed to a variety of influences. Initially, he thought that great modern art would depict contemporary life in comparable ways to classical art, but with technologically informed means. Later in life, he became increasingly interested in Gothic art and popular posters, and the effect of these on his work makes it some of the earliest modern art to employ such unusual forms of expression. His achievement catapulted him to the forefront of the Parisian avant-garde in a matter of months. His victory was short-lived, since he died at the age of 31 after just a decade of mature labour. However, his inventions would have a huge impact, influencing painters as varied as Vincent Van Gogh and the Italian Futurists, and images like Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grand Jatte (1884) have since become well-known classics. Seurat was motivated by a desire to move away from Impressionism’s focus on the transitory moment and instead depict what he saw as the basic and unchangeable aspects of existence. Nonetheless, he inherited many of his techniques from Impressionism, from his appreciation of modern subject matter and scenes of urban leisure to his aim to capture all of the colours that interacted to form the look of represented things rather than just the ‘local’, or visible, hue.

A variety of scientific concepts regarding colour, shape, and emotion captivated Seurat. He felt that lines that curved in a specific direction, as well as colours of a specific warmth or coolness, might have specific expressive effects. He also investigated the idea that opposing or complimentary colours might visually combine to produce considerably more vibrant tones than mixing paint alone. He used the term “chromo-luminism” to describe the technique he created, however it is more often known as Divisionism (after the process of dividing local colour into distinct dots) or Pointillism (after the tiny strokes of paint that were crucial to achieve the flickering effects of his surfaces).

Seurat’s first instincts in terms of style were conservative and classical, despite his innovative approaches. Though the subject matter – the different urban leisure pursuits of the bourgeois and working classes – was fully modern and typically Impressionist, he saw himself in the tradition of great Salon painters, and thought of the figures in his major paintings almost as if they were figures in monumental classical reliefs.

Later works by Seurat abandoned the serene, stately classicism of early works such as Bathers at Asnières in favour of a more dynamic and stylized style influenced by sources like as cartoons and popular posters. These gave his art a tremendous new expressiveness, and led to him being hailed as an oddball and a renegade by the Surrealists long later.

Childhood

Georges Seurat was born on December 2, 1859, in Paris, France, to a family of three children. His father, Chrysostome-Antoine Seurat, was a bailiff, and his mother, Ernestine Faivre, was from a wealthy family of sculptors. By the time Seurat was born, his eccentric father had already retired with a little fortune, and he spent most of his time in Le Raincy, some 12 kilometres from the family’s luxurious house in Paris. Seurat grew up in a house with his mother, brother Émile, and sister Marie-Berthe.

During the Franco-Prussian War and the following Paris Commune revolt, the family briefly migrated to Fontainebleau in 1870. As a child, Seurat had a serious interest in painting, which he was encouraged to pursue by his maternal uncle, Paul Haumonté, a textile trader and amateur painter. His uncle taught Seurat his first lessons in art. Around 1875, he began his official art education by enrolling at a local art school and studying under sculptor Justin Lequien.

Early Life

Seurat’s official education started in 1875, when he enrolled in the local municipal art school, where he studied sculpture under sculptor Justin Lequien. He met Edmond Aman-Jean (1858-1935) there, and the two of them enrolled at Henri Lehmann’s Ecole des Beaux-Arts, which was founded by Henri Lehmann, a pupil of Neo-Classical painter Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres.

From February 1878 until November 1879, Seurat was a student at the Academy. Drawing and composition were heavily emphasised in the curriculum, and Seurat spent the most of his time sketching from plaster casts and live models.

In his spare time, Seurat pursued his own creative studies and visited museums and libraries across Paris. He also enlisted the help of the painter Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, who specialised in large-scale allegorical and classical subjects. Seurat’s sketches, which date from 1874, contain reproductions of Holbein’s paintings, a copy of Nicolas Poussin’s hand from the renowned Louvre self-portrait, and figures from Raphael’s pictures.

Color theories and the science of optics were introduced to Seurat through Charles Blanc’s The Grammar of Painting and Engraving (1867) and Michel-Eugène Chevreul’s The Principles of Harmony and Contrast of Colors (1839), both of which were fundamental to his thought and practise as a painter. One of the foundations for Seurat’s Divisionist method was Chevreul’s discovery that by juxtaposing complimentary hues, one could generate the sense of another colour.

Seurat went to the Fourth Impressionist Exhibition in April 1879. This was his first exposure to their work, and the work of artists like Claude Monet and Camille Pissarro, who were free of scholastic constraints, profoundly impacted his subsequent experimentation. However, in November, he began his military duty at Brest, where he spent all of his leisure time reading and sketching fellow recruits, seascapes, and city scenes.

Seurat’s grasp of colour theory and the impact of colour on the human eye grew over the years. He also read Ogden N. Rood’s Modern Chromatics (1879), which suggested that painters should experiment with colour contrast by juxtaposing little coloured dots to observe how they are blended by the eye.

Mid Life

Between 1881 and 1884, Seurat began to apply his theoretical study to compositions, resulting in his first big painting effort, the Bathers at Asnières (1884). This massive painting, which was based on several tiny oil drawings and figure studies, depicts a group of labourers resting by the Seine. The final piece is a wonderful depiction of the light and ambiance of late summer. It was primarily painted in the criss-cross brushstroke style known as balayé, and Seurat later retouched it with contrasting colour dots in specific sections.

Bathers was presented to the state-sponsored Salon in 1883, but it was rejected by the jury. Seurat and a group of other painters formed the Société des Artistes Indépendants, which allowed him to show Bathers in June of 1884. There he met and befriended Paul Signac, a fellow artist who had been profoundly affected by Seurat’s methods. Following the Bathers, Seurat began work on Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grand Jatte, a two-year mural-sized painting. The artist visited La Grande Jatte, a Seine island in the Parisian neighbourhood of Neuilly, several times, creating drawings and over thirty oil sketches in preparation for the final piece. He repainted the picture in the winter of 1885-86 using a style he dubbed “chromo-luminarism” commonly known as Divisionism or Pointillism. This method employs contrasting hue dots that interact when viewed from a distance to produce a dazzling, shimmering appearance. Around 1887, he repainted portions of the Bathers in the same style. In May 1886, Seurat showed La Grande Jatte at the Eighth Impressionist Exhibition. Seurat distinguished himself as the head of a new avant-garde with his visual effects of light and colour, as well as his sophisticated portrayal of diverse socioeconomic strata.

Late Life

The presentation of La Grande Jatte in 1886 sparked unexpected international interest in Seurat’s art. Seurat was featured in an avant-garde review shortly after the exhibition, and several of his works were displayed by the renowned art dealer Paul Durant-Ruel in both Paris and New York City.

He began interacting with a small circle of Symbolist painters and authors residing in Paris around this time. His new affinities alarmed his friends Pissarro and Signac, who thought he was abandoning pure colour and light studies in favour of romanticised themes. The final major works of Seurat show Paris nightlife, and they all have a subdued palette that contrasts sharply with the brightness of his early works.

Seurat spent his summers on the Normandy coast, painting coastal views of Honfleur in 1886, Port-en-Bessin in 1888, Le Crotoy in 1889, and Gravelines in 1890, save from a brief spell of resumed military service in summer 1887. During the winter, he completed these paintings and began working on huge figure compositions. The dots tended to be finer and more spread out, giving the paintings a more spontaneous look, although being created in his Pointillist manner.

Seurat visited Belgium in 1889 and exhibited in the Salon des Vingt (XX) in Brussels. Following his return from this trip, he met Madeleine Knobloch, a 20-year-old model, and began living with her in secret. Unbeknownst to his friends and family, Knobloch gave birth to a boy in February 1890.

Seurat’s sole known portrait of Madeleine Knobloch, Young Woman Powdering Herself, was shown at his Salon des Indépendants exhibition the same year.

While Seurat began painting The Circus, Madeleine Knobloch became pregnant again at the beginning of 1891. This painting would be left incomplete. Seurat became sick with a fever on March 26 and died three days later. In two weeks, his son died of a similar disease and was buried alongside Seurat in Paris’ Père-Lachaise cemetery.

Seurat died at the age of 31, but he left behind a significant body of work that included seven colossal paintings, hundreds of drawings and sketches, and around 40 smaller-scale paintings and sketches. Despite the fact that his body of work was very limited, it had a lasting influence. He was one of the first painters to apply colour theory in a systematic and dedicated way, and his technical breakthroughs inspired many of his colleagues. When art critic Félix Fénéon created the name Neo-Impressionism in 1886, it was to define Seurat, Signac, and Pissarro’s new style of painting and their rejection of Impressionism’s spontaneity.

Famous Art by Georges Seurat

Bathers at Asnières

1884

The Bathers, Seurat’s first major painting, is his first effort to reconcile classicism with contemporary, quasi-scientific methods to colour and shape. It portrays a scene on the Seine in Paris, near the Clichy factory visible in the distance. Seurat’s palette is bright enough to be Impressionist, but his careful method is far from that style’s passion of portraying the fleeting. The scene’s blending of hues also reveals Seurat’s fascination with Eugene Delacroix’s use of single-hued tones. And the working-class individuals represented in this setting contrast sharply with the leisured bourgeois types painted by artists like Monet.

Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grand Jatte

1884-1886

Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grand Jatte was one of the standout pieces at the eighth and last Impressionist exhibition in 1884, and after it was presented later that year at the Sociéte des Artistes Indépendants, critic Félix Fénéon coined the term “Neo-Impressionism.” Seurat spent most of this time sketching in the park in preparation for the painting, which took him two years to complete. It would go on to become the most well-known photograph of the 1880s. The size of the painting, like in Bathers, is equivalent to the grandeur and ambition of great Salon paintings. The location, which is once again on the Seine in northwest Paris, is also near by.

The Circus

1891

Even with intricate figure compositions, Seurat’s early works generally exhibit a surprising stillness, while The Circus features a scene of dynamic movement and is indicative of his late manner. Although the horse and bareback rider have been inverted, the picture is based on an unidentified Nouveau Cirque poster from 1888. The painter Charles Angrand, a friend of Seurat’s, is seated in the first row, wearing a silk hat with a lock of hair visible beneath it. This was Seurat’s final work, which he left incomplete when he died abruptly in March 1891. It was sold to his buddy Paul Signac not long after.

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Georges Seurat is well known for pioneering the Neo-Impressionist style known as Divisionism, or Pointillism, which is characterised by a gently flickering surface of tiny dots or colour strokes.
His inventions were inspired by new quasi-scientific theories about colour and expression, but the elegant beauty of his work may be attributed to a variety of influences.
Initially, he thought that great modern art would depict contemporary life in comparable ways to classical art, but with technologically informed means.

Later in life, he became increasingly interested in Gothic art and popular posters, and the effect of these on his work makes it some of the earliest modern art to employ such unusual forms of expression.
His achievement catapulted him to the forefront of the Parisian avant-garde in a matter of months.
His victory was short-lived, since he died at the age of 31 after just a decade of mature labour.

However, his inventions would have a huge impact, influencing painters as varied as Vincent Van Gogh and the Italian Futurists, and images like Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grand Jatte (1884) have since become well-known classics.
Seurat’s first instincts in terms of style were conservative and classical, despite his innovative approaches.
Later works by Seurat abandoned the serene, stately classicism of early works such as Bathers at Asnières in favour of a more dynamic and stylized style influenced by sources like as cartoons and popular posters.