14 Rue Bonaparte, 75006 Paris, France
In 1878-1879, Seurat studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris.
14 Rue Bonaparte, 75006 Paris, France
In 1878-1879, Seurat studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris.
Marie-Berthe Seurat, Georges' sister
Ernestine Faivre, Georges' mother
Antoine Chrysostome Seurat, Georges' father
1882
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Seurat was born on December 2, 1859 in Paris, France. He was the son of Antoine Chrysostome Seurat, a former legal official, and Ernestine Faivre. Georges had a brother, whose name was Émile Augustin and a sister, named Marie-Berthe, both older.
Georges Seurat studied art at the École Municipale de Sculpture et Dessin. In 1878, he entered the École des Beaux-Arts. In November, 1879 he left the École des Beaux-Arts for a year of military service.
The impressionist style, which marked a radical shift in the course of Western painting, blossomed for the most part in the 1870's. During the next 2 decades, a number of young painters sought to work out the tenets of impressionism in terms of their personal styles. These artists are generally separated into two groups: the postimpressionists, which included Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Gauguin and Paul Cézanne, and the neoimpressionists, which included Georges Seurat and Paul Signac. In particular, Seurat wished to carry the theories of impressionism to their logical conclusions and to establish an art with a truly scientific base.
Seurat was interested in science, as well as art, especially in scientific color theory. During the late 1870's and the early 1880's, he read numerous treatises on this subject, including those by M. E. Chevreul, H. von Helmholtz and O. N. Rood. He also studied Eugène Delacroix's writings on color. Essentially, Seurat's aim was to separate each color into its component parts (this process is known as divisionism) and to apply each of the component colors individually on the canvas surface. In order to have the colors blend optically, each one had to be applied in the form of a small dot of pigment. The phenomenon, whereby colors were allowed to blend optically instead of being mixed on the palette, had been the discovery of the impressionists, but Seurat carried the process further. He analyzed it scientifically and developed a theory to explain it. The term "pointillism" refers to the actual application of these theories to painting.
Seurat's first major demonstration of pointillism was "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte". A large work, it is extremely complicated, consisting of numerous figures, scattered both across and into pictorial space. The scene itself is typically impressionist in presenting an outdoor world. Yet the work departs radically from impressionism: it was painted entirely in the studio with each of its many elements being carefully calculated in terms of color, light and composition. "La Grande Jatte" is thus a tour de force in revealing Seurat's painstaking method: like his academic predecessors, he made careful studies for each figure. As a result, each seems frozen in its position, but each scintillates, because it is composed of a myriad of individual color spots. As a whole, the painting is at once both classical and modern.
Seurat, Signac and Odilon Redon were instrumental in organizing the Société des Artistes Indépendants, which had its first exhibition in 1884. Like the impressionists before them, these artists originated their own shows because their radical art had been rejected by the juries of the official Salon. And although these shows contained a wide variety of individual styles, Seurat's ambitious demonstrations of pointillism clearly established him as the major figure of neo-impressionism.
Between 1886 and 1890, his influence thus spread to numerous other painters, including Gauguin, Camille Pissarro, Van Gogh and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, all of whom went through pointillist periods in their own work. After completing "La Grande Jatte", Seurat consciously sought to expand the expressive range of his work. He became interested in motion and in the emotional quality of linear rhythms. Seurat's friend, the esthetician Charles Henry, encouraged and shared these interests, which are reflected in "La Parade" (1887 - 1888), "La Chahut" (1889 - 1890) and "the Circus" (unfinished). In contrast to the formality of "La Grande Jatte", these works contain moving figures, sparkling lights and a generally lyric atmosphere. In spite of this expanded content, however, Seurat did not relinquish his methodical, scientific technique. He continued to work slowly, carefully developing his theories and producing numerous drawings and oil studies for each painting.
Because of his painstaking working process, Seurat completed relatively few major paintings. Throughout his life, however, he was a tireless and consummate draftsman. As a student, he made drawings of classical sculpture, architectural motifs and the human figure. Many of these are reminiscent of the touch and style of Ingres. But by the early 1880's, Seurat began to evolve a more personal style, generally employing Conté crayon and an unusually high-grain paper. The range of feeling in these drawings is extraordinary and occasionally surprising in comparison to the rather cool tenor of his paintings. The master delicately used his materials to suggest figures, spaces and atmosphere. Frequently he allowed the grain of the paper to show through the Conté crayon and achieved a sense of quiet intimacy, that has few parallels in the history of the medium.
From 1883 until his death, Seurat exhibited his work at the Salon, the Salon des Indépendants, Les XX in Brussels, the eighth Impressionist exhibition and various other exhibitions in France and abroad.
Georges-Pierre Seurat was the leading figure in the neo-impressionist movement of the 1880's and in the development of the technique of pointillism. "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte" is his most significant work. It is also important to note, that he was one of the founders of the Société des Artistes Indépendants.
Bathers at Asnières
1884A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte
1886The Suburbs
1882View of Fort Samson
1885Circus Sideshow
1888The Seine and la Grande Jatte - Springtime
1888Gray Weather, Grande Jatte
1888The Eiffel Tower
1889The Circus
1891Seated Nude: Study for 'Une Baignade'
1883On the one hand, Seurat could be characterized as a personality with extreme and delicate sensibility, and on the other hand, he seemed to be a person, who got a passion for logical abstraction and an almost mathematical precision of mind.
Seurat concealed his relationship with Madeleine Knobloch, an artist's model. On February 16, 1890, she gave birth to their son, who was named Pierre-Georges. At the time of Seurat's death, Madeleine was pregnant with a second child, who died during or shortly after birth.
