Georges Seurat's A Sunday On La Grande Jatte

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How is it possible to draw without lines? This may be a simple question to answer today because we have already seen it being done by others, but in the 19th century; no one would have thought of such a possibility. Yet, someone did. His name is Georges Seurat. Seurat was an artist trained in the French academic tradition that emphasized the importance of lines in drawing. Yet Seurat refused to be confined within the limits of his training. He thought outside the lines and the result was a breakthrough new style which came to be known as pointillism.
Pointillism can be defined as “a technique whereby both color and contour are created through the methodical application of tiny dots of color” (Skrapits, 1992). In doing this, some may label …show more content…

Examining this work shows the ambition that Seurat had. He employs the technique of pointillism in this work, but one can see that it was much more refined by the time he created A Sunday on La Grande Jatte. Seurat made thirteen preparatory works towards this work. To Seurat, the impressionist sense of spontaneity was second to the academic approach. He didn’t just paint en plain air as most impressionists did. He made sketches en plain air, but they were to serve as study; not a final product. He made several sketches outside as he observed his subjects and the landscape, but then took everything back to the studio where he applied his studies to create his completed works. This sense of going against the norm seems to be at the base of Seurat’s working process. He followed academic process but not entirely, he was an impressionist painter, but did not adhere to all impressionists methods. His works lead to a new kind of genre termed …show more content…

He made landscape drawings of trees, women and even animals on La Grande Jatte scenery using this format in order to properly study their forms and shadows. Such conté crayon drawings studies include Seated Woman with a Parasol (1884/85), Woman Walking with a Parasol (1884), Landscape with dog (1884) and several drawings of trees. Once he was comfortable with his conté crayon drawings, he started applying color to his studies. One of his study paintings, The Island of La Grande Jatte (1884) shows just the landscape without any people or animals on it. In this study, Seurat studies how the light and shadow areas on the landscape will look like. It’s as if he is figuring out from which angle to paint his masterpiece. He experimented with pointillism even in these early stages to figure out how the grass, the water on the river and the shadows cast by the trees will look like. Once he was comfortable with how it looked, Seurat started adding subjects to the landscape. He made several studies using color with various amounts of people and animals on the landscape, before painting his final masterpiece with all the figures included. These color studies include Woman with a Monkey (1884), Seated and Standing Women (1884), Rose-Colored Skirt (1884), Soldier (Cadet from Saint-Cyr)(1884) and Sketch with Many Figures (1884).
This painting can be divided into multiple separate paintings

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