Georges Seurat
Georges Seurat was a French artist who lived from 1859 to 1891. He was part of the Post-Impressionist movement that was sweeping through France and the rest of Europe at that time and is most known for being the father of the Neo-Impressionism art movement, altering the trajectory of modern art. Seurat’s painting techniques, specifically pointillism and chromoluminarism, also became art movements in and of themselves.
Georges-Pierre Seurat was born into a wealthy family in Paris. He first studied art at École Municipale de Sculpture et Dessin, but soon moved on to the more influential École des Beaux-Arts. Seurat was immensely interested in color theory and applied the rules of contrast in his works; the rule being any color is heightened when placed next to its complementary color. After studying the high-hue color palettes of Impressionist artists such as Claude Monet and Renoir, Seurat used their colors with a more rigorous technique to create works of art in a brand-new style, pointillism.
The pointillism painting technique used tiny points of color to depict a scene allowing the image to blend in the viewers mind, rather than blending the paint on the canvas. It was one of the first Neo-impressionistic art styles and was advancing art into modernism. Also, unlike the impressionism artists of his time, Seurat spent a lot of his time making sketches of his subjects before finalizing them as paintings in his studio.
In 1884, Seurat’s first large scale painting was denied at the Paris Salon. He exhibited it at an exhibition at the Société des Artistes Indépendants whose slogan was “No jury, no awards”. It was at the exhibition that Seurat met fellow artist, Paul Signac. The two artists greatly influenced each other. Signac was taken with Seurat’s color theories. Signac has said that Seurat’s works were “the most beautiful painter’s drawings in existence”. The two worked in concert to explore the pointillism technique. In 1885, Signac and Seurat debuted their pointillism style at the final Impressionist exhibition.
Georges Seurat fell into a relationship with Madeleine Knobloch, the model who posed for his painting, “Jeune femme se poudrant”, and by 1889 they were living together. She bore him a son and they lived for several years together. Georges Seurat died suddenly in 1891 at only 31 years of age, from what was most likely pneumonia or diphtheria. His son died from the same affliction two weeks later.
Back to the Artists page.
You can learn about different art movements here.
