Georges Seurat (1859 to 1891) admired the Impressionists' bright color but not their quick, intuitive method. He wanted color to be as systematic as science. He read color theorists such as Michel-Eugène Chevreul, who showed that colors placed side by side change each other, and that complementary colors intensify each other when they are next to one another.
Seurat's method, which he called chromoluminarism and others call pointillism or divisionism, was to place small dots or dashes of pure color side by side, unmixed on the palette, so that the viewer's eye would combine them at a distance. Orange dots among green ones make a sunlit lawn; blue dots in the orange make shadow.
Key idea
Looking closely: A Sunday on La Grande Jatte
Describe. Parisians of every class spend a Sunday afternoon on an island park in the Seine: couples strolling, a woman fishing, a man lying on the grass, children, dogs, a monkey on a leash, boats on the river. Analyze. The canvas is about 2 by 3 meters, covered in tiny touches of color. The figures are stiff and still, most in strict profile or front view, arranged in rows and spaced like columns, with long shadows across the grass. Seurat worked on it for two years from dozens of drawings and oil sketches, and added a painted border of dots later. Interpret. It takes the Impressionist subject of modern leisure and freezes it into something calm and timeless, compared by critics to ancient Egyptian or Greek friezes. It was shown at the eighth and last Impressionist exhibition in 1886.
Why it works
Common mistake
Worked example: Near and far
- Close up, the eye can still separate the dots: red and yellow.
- From far away, the dots are too small to separate, so the eye combines them.
- The combined color reads as a vibrating orange, brighter than a dull mixed paint.
Answer: Separate red and yellow dots up close; a shimmering orange from far away.