Georges Seurat | A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte

Georges-Pierre Seurat (Georges Seurat; December 2, 1859 – March 29, 1891). He was a famous painter who helped start two art styles: Pointillism and Neo-Impressionism. Georges Seurat best known for pioneering the painting techniques called Divisionism and Pointillism.

Georges Seurat had a unique artistic style. He filled his paintings with tiny, soft, and colorful dots. If you look closely, you’ll see each dot comes from careful, thoughtful brushstrokes—this is totally different from Vincent van Gogh’s bold painting style or Paul Cézanne’s use of big blocks of color.

A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte

A Sunday on La Grande Jatte is the most famous work by French Post-Impressionist painter Seurat, completed in 1886. It stands as a groundbreaking piece of Pointillism (also known as Neo-Impressionism).

This painting is 2 meters long and 3 meters wide. It’s made up of 6 million tiny color dots—each dot is just 5 millimeters across. The painting shows 48 people, 8 boats, 3 dogs, 1 monkey, and 1 horse, and it covers about 6.4 square meters in total. The work is now in the permanent collection of the Art Institute of Chicago.

The painting captures Parisians enjoying their Sunday afternoons by the Seine River on La Grande Jatte. Gentlemen, ladies, soldiers, boatmen, and children spread across the grass, each in unique poses, creating a serene and elegant scene.

Georges Seurat adopted scientific color theory and meticulous Pointillist techniques. He applied countless small color dots directly to the canvas, relying on the human eye’s optical mixing to achieve harmony of light and color. This gives the painting a shimmering effect under sunlight.

Among the millions of dots, a little girl stands out as the only figure dressed entirely in white. This simplified treatment makes her appear as if she is glowing.

After Georges Seurat's death in 1891, the painting was first inherited by his mother, and later by his brothers. In 1900, it was sold for a low price of 800 francs, and then changed hands several times before finally ending up in the hands of private collectors. In 1924,an American bought it for a cheap price of 20,000 francs.

The French never thought this painting would now be worth more than 100 million yuan—they let their national treasure slip away without meaning to.

Legendary composer Stephen Sondheim created the musical Sunday in the Park with George, and he got inspiration from A Sunday on La Grande Jatte.

It is one of only seven musicals in history to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

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