A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande

Introduction

Georges Seurat (Paris 2 December 1859 - Paris 29 March 1891), French painter, pioneer of pointillism and divisionism that can be qualified as impressionism science. Genre painter, figures, portraits, landscapes, cartoons and landscapes were his specialty. Signac also commented on the importance of color purity in a pointillist piece: "I attach more and more importance to the purity of the brushstroke - I try to give it maximum purity and intensity. Any defiling sleight of hand or smearing disgusts me. When one can paint with jewels, why use? Each time that my brushstroke happens to come up against another, not yet dry, and this mixture produces a dirty tone, I feel great physical disgust! It is this passion for beautiful colors which make us paint as we do...and not the love of the 'dot', as foolish people say." Signac states here that the pointillist artists were not physically into their paintings for the "dot" as most people would think (Everdell, 2008).

The Techniques of the Painter

During its brief existence, the painter cerebral, cultured, sophisticated, beyond the immediacy with determination "romantic" painting that gives the impressionist painting to develop a method based on precise scientific laws and revolutionize the concept of figurative art. His problem is to find a link between art and science and, more specifically, between painting, physiology and psychology of perfection. The theory of Seurat's painting is based on optics, or more precisely on a concept called "pointillism." This is based on the idea that light due to the combination of several colors, and therefore a set of colored dots can juxtaposed, observed from a distance, recompose the unity of tone and make light with the vibration of advantage of accuracy. Georges Seurat was particularly inspired by research that the French chemist Eugene Chevreul was conducted on restoration of tapestries, and in particular has been very interested in his essay the law of simultaneous contrast of colors, published in 1839.

A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande

Analysis of his work

The Island of La Grande Jatte by Georges Seurat painted in 1884-85, is regarded as the manifesto of pointillism. The table is presented in 1886 at the latest exhibition of Impressionist and raises heated debates because of the new technique. Preceded by a sixty oil sketches and charcoal, painting is a Sunday summer afternoon on the banks of the Seine.

A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte shows members of each of the social classes participating in various park activities. The tiny juxtaposed dots of multi-colored paint allow the viewer's eye to blend colors optically, rather than having the colors blended on the canvas or pre-blended as a material pigment. This work exhibited in 1886, for the first time is considering a clear picture introducing pointillism, a painting process invented by Signac and Seurat. Pointillism up the light from separate keys of complementary colors (blue and orange, yellow and purple, red and green) then obtained a primary color by ...