"A SUNDAY ON LA GRANDE JATTE " BY GEORGES SEURAT

                            

A Sunday on La Grande Jatte

by Georges Seurat

Georges Seurat (1858-1891) 

Georges Seurat was a French Post-Impressionist who pioneered Neo-Impressionism and the technique of Pointillism. Born in Paris, he studied at the École des Beaux-Arts and became fascinated by optical science and colour theory. Rather than blending pigment, he applied tiny, distinct dots of complementary colour side by side, allowing the viewer’s eye to mix them.

Georges Seurat's most celebrated work,"A Sunday on La Grande Jatte (1884–86)" , housed at the Art Institute of Chicago, took two years to complete and epitomises his methodical, almost scientific approach. Though he died aged just thirty-one, his systematic style profoundly influenced modern art. The 7 large, exhibition paintings Seurat considered his main works:

1. Bathers at Asnières  :Une Baignade, Asnières_ (1884): 2.06m x 3m - National Gallery, London

2. A Sunday on La Grande Jatte  : Un dimanche après-midi à l'Île de la Grande Jatte (1884-1886): 

2.07m x 3.08m  : Art Institute of Chicago.

3. Les Poseuses / The Models (1886-1888): 

2m x 2.5m  : Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia

4. Parade de cirque : Circus Sideshow (1887-1888): 

0.99m x 1.49m : Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

5. Le Chahut (1889-1890) : 1.70m x 1.41m :  Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands

6. Young Woman Powdering Herself : Jeune femme se poudrant (1889-1890) : 0.95m x 0.79m :  Courtauld Gallery, London

7. The Circus  : Le Cirque (1890-1891) : Unfinished at his death, aged 31  : 1.85m x 1.52m :  Musée d'Orsay, Paris

A Sunday on La Grande Jatte

Saw his painting ,"A Sunday on La Grande Jatte"

in  original inside the Art Institute of Chicago. It's huge , about 7 x 10 feet, which is why it fills the whole wall like that. It has been in the permanent collection there since 1926, in the Helen Birch Bartlett Memorial Collection. In the museum it's usually hung in Gallery 240.

Painted 1884-1886, it's the painting that invented Pointillism. Seurat didn't mix colors on a palette , he placed millions of tiny, distinct dots of pure color side by side. Up close it's just dots, from a distance your eye mixes them into that sunny riverbank.

A few things about ,"A Sunday on La Grande Jatte":

 

The technique is called Neo-Impressionism / Pointillism.Seurat was obsessed with colour theory and optics. That border of blue, orange and red dots around the frame is painted by him too.

It's Paris on a Sunday afternoon.The island of La Grande Jatte on the Seine river. Everyone from the working-class man in the orange shirt lying in the grass at bottom left, to the fashionable woman with the monkey on a leash on the right.

It's perfectly composed. One needs to see how almost everyone is in profile, like Egyptian friezes, and how still everything feels , even the dog. Seurat wanted modern life to feel timeless.

It took him two years and dozens of oil sketches. When he showed it in 1886, it shocked everyone and made him famous ;  he was only 26.

( Avtar Mota )

CHINAR SHADE by Autarmota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 India License.
Based on a work at http:\\autarmota.blogspot.com\.