In the community of young artists in Paris, he was one of the few who was silent and smiled ironically, watching his fellow artists. The soul of the company, mysterious and incomprehensible Georges-Pierre Seurat all his short life he risked being rejected and did not fear it. He walked his own, once chosen path, and presented the world with the foundations of neo-impressionism, which forever changed the face of painting.

In the paintings of Seurat during his lifetime, some found inspiration, others meticulously looked for flaws. Modern researchers are trying to find the mysterious ciphers based on his most famous works, such as "Sunday on the island of Grande Jatte". The creator of the pointillism genre tried to put as much soul as possible into his work, as if he knew that the time allotted on earth was negligible.

No one, not even friends from the so-called circle of "independent" artists, could boast that Seurat knew well. Perhaps the roots of secrecy went far back in childhood, where Georges-Pierre, youngest child in the family, was as if between a hammer and a hard place. On the one hand, a tired, somewhat indifferent mother, on the other, a father, a ministerial official, in last years life with all the passion surrendered to the religious feeling. The older brother and sister revolved in the same atmosphere of lack of spiritual intimacy and left their father's house early. Deprived of a strong attachment to anyone, the boy began to be interested in art. Only it could make him break the silence and inspire conversations with those who were ready to listen and support. Parents did not see the bad in these inclinations, as well as, by the way, the good - they considered their duties fulfilled, because the family had capital that provided the children with a comfortable future.

The beginning of the artist's career was ordinary: in the class of the local school of painting, Georges-Pierre Seurat and other students pored over the reproduction of the outlines of plaster busts and paintings by old masters.
Barely reaching the age of 19, he was admitted to the School of Fine Arts. Here, too, a preference was given to copying classic examples of craftsmanship, but Georges-Pierre had already discovered the beginnings of his own. creative methods. The young man was struck to the very heart by the works of the Impressionists he saw. Even, which he had been so fond of earlier, was pushed aside under the influence of this powerful impression.

Seurat did not leave his creative experiments, even when the homeland demanded to pay military duty. His regiment stood idle for a long time quartered, and there was almost always plenty of time. After a year, Georges-Pierre Seurat returned to Paris and sat down in his small studio, filling in the gaps in technology. During this period, he considered it a paramount task to comprehend the nature of light in the picture, for which he performed most of the sketches with ordinary chalk. The study of the work of the Impressionists continued, but another star appeared in Seurat's coordinate system.

There is an opinion that it was under the influence of the works that he eventually came to his own color schemes. The young man's unique memory contributed a lot to improving his skills - everything, down to the slightest nuances of color and light, he saw once, Seurat could later easily remember and then reproduce. But the main discovery of the young painter was not paintings at all, but a solid scientific work written by Michel Eugene Chevreul. The one who devoted half his life to studying chemical properties materials in a dyeing workshop, he deduced the laws of color contrast, according to which different colors located side by side gave a certain effect.

From the moment that Seurat joined the work of Chevreul, the starting point in his paintings was light. In order to understand the nature of the combination of colors and the impression it creates, he tirelessly observed, and at the same time more and more moved away from the manner of the Impressionists. Strokes of pure color, he thought, faded as they merged with each other. Seurat was looking for a tool that could bring the breath of life to the canvas. He worked in the open air, traveling in search of inspiration all the neighborhoods of Paris, so popular with local creative youth. Almost daily, for his exercises, he harassed planks, which he used instead of canvas. He himself called them "croquetons". These were sketches, sketches, where Seurat was still trying to comprehend the nature of contrast, the strange relationship of light, shadow and color. Just as eagerly as before, he peered at the works of the Impressionists at exhibitions. These searches were bound to end with a grandiose success.

In the spring of 1883, together with friends who had succeeded much more in academic painting, Georges-Pierre Seurat decided to exhibit his work at the nearest Salon. Ernest Laurent and Aman-Jean, friends of the painter, did not fail by submitting paintings on traditional subjects to the jury - both received high awards. Georges-Pierre, in turn, received a very cool review for his portrait of Aman-Jean, and another work depicting his mother at embroidery was not allowed to participate at all.

Such a technique did not cool Seurat's ardor at all, almost immediately he began large-scale work on a canvas measuring two by three meters. From "croquetons", sketches in a notebook, endless observations of the walking public, "Bathers in Asnieres" was born.

Georges-Pierre Seurat was true to himself and his teachers - the composition, which was neglected by many impressionists, is sustained to the smallest detail, the picture is divided into mathematically verified zones, the color is divided into components and assembled again to pour out onto the viewer with a stream of sun over the banks of the Seine.

It is paradoxical how motionless the places appear on his canvases that hardly knew summer boredom, how static nature is, faces, poses, and even a cry seems to have froze on the lips of the bather in the right corner. One of the most crowded corners of the Parisian suburbs is immersed in absolute silence on a clear summer day.

The jury's refusal was a devastating blow. Seurat was painfully aware of the words of the critic, who called the work of some authors "meaningless, anemic and far-fetched", and since then he preferred not to have any relationship with the official Salon. Thus, he went over to the side of the outcasts - artists whose paintings were also not recognized by criticism. Here fate pushed the silent young man with Paul Signac, and this meeting became fateful. While Seurat was more interested in theories that allowed him to more accurately penetrate the structure of painting, Signac was able to discern and calculate the principles of his work, which gave rise to the name "pointillism" (or "divisionism").

In the fertile atmosphere of the Salon of the Outcasts, Seurat again felt the need to create. Almost two years were spent on the grandiose in scope and thoroughness of the execution of "Sunday on the Island of Grande Jatte". At the eighth, which became the last, exhibition of the Impressionists, the picture made a splash.

Apart from negative feedback new voices sounded, heralding an era new school painting. With light hand criticism Seurat began to be considered the leader of the current, which would later be called "neo-impressionism".

Subsequently, many artists considered themselves to be his followers. But the first years of neo-impressionism was represented mainly by imitators of Seurat, who was rather unnerved by such fame. He closed himself in, as in school years. Even about the affair with the seamstress, from whom in 1890 Georges-Pierre had a son, named "mirror" Pierre-Georges, most of his friends and relatives did not know.

The astonishing success of "Sunday" and the ensuing period of seclusion of the artist meant that later works were hardly known to the public. Among them are the paintings "Cabaret", the image eiffel tower and the most modernist of works, The Circus.

A serious illness overtook Seurat when he was preparing to break his silence and take part in a new exhibition. In just three days, the charming, silent frequenter of the Salon of the Outcasts, who sought to comprehend the secrets of the Universe on the scale of the canvas, died.

Georges-Pierre Seurat was 31 years old.

150 years ago, December 2, 1859, was born french artist Georges Seurat, founder of the neo-impressionist school. His creative way fit in ten years, seems much brighter life path: Seurat did not "make revolutions", did not provoke the public, and his contemporaries remembered him as a closed, unsociable and independent person. Main love the artist was painting - for hours he could talk only about composition and color. But the fact that Ser had a mistress and a son, relatives learned only after his death.

"He worked with a frantic obsession and lived, like a monk, in complete solitude in his small workshop," his contemporary writer Arsen Alexander recalled about the artist. Seurat studied all his life, endlessly improving his painting technique, drawing, studying the masterpieces of painting and, along with them, scientific books: the works of Charles Blanc, Rude, Chevalier. Such a two-sided approach allowed the appearance of an original pictorial manner, called "pointillism"" (from the French point - a point).

The essence of this artistic technique lies in the transfer of color and shades on the canvas in separate strokes and is used based on the optical effect of merging small details when looking at a picture from a distance.

Start

Sera was born into a quite prosperous, though not without oddities, family. His parents did not live together: his father, Antoine Chrysost Seurat, was a bailiff in the town of La Villette and settled in his summer house, in the basement of which he arranged a prayer house with a gardener as an attendant. He left his wife and son in Paris and visited them rarely, no more than once a week. But the parents never denied their son financial support, and Sera could work all his life without thinking about money.

Painting interested Seurat in early age, as a teenager, he began attending art courses at the municipal evening school, where he mastered the traditional manner of writing, copying plaster casts and paintings by old masters.

Later, it was decided to continue academic education at the School of Fine Arts, where Seurat entered in 1878 and where he studied painting under the guidance of Henri Leman, spending, according to the memoirs of his contemporaries, all his free time in the School's library.

In 1879, Seurat visits an exhibition of the Impressionists, whose works, especially Monet and Degas, make the strongest impression on the artist - their manner of writing, the "glow" of paintings, the lightness of the brush encourage Seurat to look for a way to "subordinate" this glow to the logic of natural laws.

The first big result of the search is the painting "Bathing in Asnieres" (1883, two by three meters), on which the artist worked for a whole year and which he hoped to exhibit at the Salon of 1884, which had accepted almost all of his works a year earlier. By this time, he was already familiar with Charles Blanc's Grammar of Drawing, according to which small strokes placed side by side on the canvas give the impression of a lively vibration of the canvas. The manner, apparently, turned out to be too innovative: the picture is sent to the Salon of Independents.

dot by dot

At this exhibition, Seurat meets Paul Signac, who later becomes his close friend and associate. Together Seurat and Signac develop the ideas of Chevrel, his theory of color for painting, Seurat studies the work of Ogden Nicholas Rude "Modern Color Theory".

Rude proved that the optical mixing of the primary colors of the solar spectrum - red, yellow and blue - makes their tone brighter than when mixing pigments. Artists come to the conclusion that paints do not need to be mixed, and strokes on the canvas must be applied separately from each other - "point by point".

With new ideas, Seurat begins work on one of his most significant and, perhaps, his most famous works - “Sunday walk on the island of Grande Jatte”, which he exhibits at the eighth and last exhibition of the Impressionists.

The public reacted to the picture ambiguously, but mostly with misunderstanding, bewilderment and skepticism. Compared to the then reigning Impressionists, Seurat's paintings seemed far-fetched and artificial to many .. The Impressionists took up arms against him, it seems, the strongest. For example, American artist Theodore Robinson called the new style "fly droppings". Ironically over the canvas and Degas. In response to Pissarro's words about the merits of "Grand Jatte", he replied: "Oh, I would have noticed it, Pissarro, but it is very large," alluding to the optical properties of pointillism, which, when viewed close, turn the picture into a color mess.
On the contrary, Maurice Ermel called this canvas "the manifesto of painting and the banner of the new school."

One way or another, the new artistic method did not go unnoticed - they talked about it, argued and, naturally, they began to imitate it. This is how a group of neo-impressionists appeared, the initiator of which was Signac. It included Albert Dubois-Pillier, Charles Angrand, Maximilian Luce and others.

After Seurat

Seurat's life ended unexpectedly: in March 1891, the artist fell ill while preparing for a new exhibition and died, as they say, from meningitis. His last, and unfinished work, was the painting "Circus", which the artist still managed to exhibit at the "Salon of the Independent".

It was a complete surprise for relatives and friends that Seurat had a mistress and a son. With Madeleine Knobloch, a seamstress, the artist met two years before his death and hid this connection from relatives and friends even when their son Pierre Georges was born. It's tragic that one year old baby died of the same infection as Sera, two days after his father's death.

Seurat's workshop left 42 paintings, 163 croquetons, 527 drawings and sketches, which became the subject of a dispute for relatives and friends of Madeleine Knobloch. However, then these pictures were not worth big money: during his lifetime, Seurat managed to sell only a few of his works (300 francs for landscapes and 60 for drawings), and his painting "The Models", which the artist himself estimated at 2,500 francs (7 francs per day of work) six years after death was sold for only 800 francs. In 1900, the artist's family sold the Grand Jatte for 800 francs, the Circus for 500 francs, and the drawings for 10 francs each.

Real recognition, as often happens, came to Seurat years later, largely thanks to the efforts of friends who did a great job of analyzing and systematizing his paintings and organizing posthumous exhibitions. An additional difficulty was that the artist usually did not sign his work. All the paintings, sketches and drawings of Seurat that were in the workshop were marked as genuine works, which became the basis for further study of the artist's work.

A year ago, in December 2008, Seurat's drawing "In the Japanese sofa" (Au divan japonais) was sold by Sotheby's for 5 million euros.

The material was prepared by the editors of rian.ru based on open sources

The creative activity of Georges Seurat has less than ten years. His artistic heritage is not numerous. But, nevertheless, he managed to develop an innovative pictorial concept, changing the course of development of painting.

Georges-Pierre Seurat
Georges Seurat

Artist, founder french school 19th-century Neo-Impressionism, whose technique of rendering the play of light with tiny strokes of contrasting color became known as pointillism.

With this technique, Seurat has created compositions with tiny, stand-alone strokes of pure color that are too small to be seen but make his paintings one delightful piece.

Georges Seurat: Seurat Forest at Pontaubert, 1881,
Forest at Pontober (Ionne)
1881
Canvas, oil
Metropolitan Museum, New York

Georges Seurat. "Artist's Mother" 1882-83
Chalk, paper. Metropolitan Museum of Art (United States).

Georges-Pierre Seurat was born on December 2, 1859 in Paris. He studied at the School of Fine Arts in 1878-1879 with Ingres' student Henri Leman. Great influence on the development young artist rendered creativity and Francisco de Goya.

Seurat showed his first paintings at the official salon in 1883 and at the First Exhibition of the Independents in 1884. Here he met Paul Signac, with whom Seurat developed a new drawing technique - pointillism, or divisionism, as the artist himself called it.

Georges Seurat. "Bathing in Asnieres". 1883-84
Oil, canvas. 200 × 300 cm. London National Gallery.

The poses of a man and a boy in a wide-brimmed hat resting his head on his hand echo the figures depicted in the background.

The horizontal line of the ferry is repeated in the line of the railway bridge and in the line of grass on the opposite bank, while the vertical of the flagpole on the ferry echoes the row of pipes rising to the sky.

The pose of a boy bathing in water is borrowed from a painting by Ingres.

The dog was added to the composition later. Like most characters, her head is depicted strictly in profile and turned to the right.

In Seurat's early studies, there were horses and bathers in the water, but they, contrary to the artist's intention, would have made the composition dynamic, so the artist replaced them with the motionless figure of a boy with palms attached to his mouth.

The painting depicts a lively scene from the life of Parisians vacationing in Asnieres near Paris. Sulfur perfectly conveyed the atmosphere of the sun summer day in the suburbs of a large industrial city with its railway bridges, stone buildings and smoking factory chimneys.

At first glance, “Bathing in Asnieres” can be called an impressionistic canvas - for the brightness of the colors and even for the fact that the figure depicted in the picture (rower on the right) is partially cut off by the edge of the frame, which is very typical for the impressionists. However, unlike them, Seurat meticulously builds the composition of his painting. He made dozens of preliminary sketches for her in pencil and oil, worked out each figure in detail, borrowing some of the poses from the works of old masters. Having finished it, the artist hoped very much for success. But the painting was rejected by the jury of the Salon of 1884, then exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants, and finally sent to the store.

"Grande Jatte Island". 1884
Private collection, New York.

"Georges Seurat - Seurat The English Channel at Grandcamp, 1885
1885
66.2 x 82.4
Canvas, oil
New York. Metropolitan Museum of Art

Georges Seurat: Seurat The Seine at Courbevoie, 1885
The Seine near Courbevoie
1885
81x65
Canvas, oil
Paris. Collection of Cachin-Signac

His famous painting "Sunday walk on the island of Grand Jatte", made in a new artistic manner, was the centerpiece of the Impressionist exhibition in 1886.

Seurat worked on this monumental canvas for two years, and it became a sensation in the last (eighth) exhibition of the Impressionists, held in 1886.

Georges Seurat. "Sunday walk on the island of Grand Jatte". 1884-86
Oil, canvas. 207.5 x 308 cm. Art Institute of Chicago, IL, USA.

The appearance of the painting Sunday walk on the island of Grand Jatte was an epoch-making event in the history of painting. Executed in the technique of pointillism, this work was exhibited at the last exhibition of the Impressionists, but was not successful. Not only critics (with the exception of Felix Fenion), but also the Impressionists themselves, were hostile to her. Renoir, Sisley, Caillebotte and Monet, who called the pointillists "puffy", refused to exhibit with them.

Critics, analyzing the picture, talked about the public loneliness of a person, about a mockery of hypocritical social norms, but Seurat himself did not want to go into metaphysical subtleties. The artist was laconic. - "I applied here," he declared, "my method, that's all."

Let's get acquainted with the analysis of the picture:

geometric transformation.
The space of "Grand Jatte" is inhabited not by individuals, but by types that differ only in clothing and behavior. A hat with long ribbons and a cape make it possible to identify this figure as a wet nurse. Deprived of any individual features, she is shown from the back and reduced to gray geometric shape, dissected by a red stripe and crowned with a red circle.

Woman with a fishing rod.
This woman's orange dress stands out sharply against the sparkling blue water. Some features may indicate that we have a prostitute who “catches” men. The double meaning of the French verb "pecher" ("to catch" and "to sin") was often played up at that time.

Jumping girl.
Among the static figures, we see a galloping girl with her hair fluttering in the wind. However, her movements (as well as the movements of the dog in the foreground) do not add dynamics to the composition - they look frozen. Similarly, the butterflies appear to be pinned to the canvas rather than flying through the air.

Shadows and light.
Horizontal shadows under the trees help create the perspective of receding space and form a rhythmic pattern in which highlights alternate with stripes of shadow. On one of his oil studies made for this painting, Seurat removed all the figures from the river bank and painted only the trees and their shadows.

Additional frame.
Seurat created an unusual frame, creating a border of colored dots around the edges of the picture. The dots are chosen so that their colors are complementary to the colors next to them on the canvas. This made it possible to enhance the intensity of the primary colors.

Fashion couple.
The figure of a woman is shown in profile, and her extravagant silhouette is created by the lush protrusions of her bustle. With one hand she holds a man smoking a cigar by the arm, and in the other she holds a monkey on a leash. The monkey is an obvious symbol here. In Seurat's time, it signified licentiousness.

Sketch for Sunday at La Grande Jatte

Unlike the Impressionists, the artist refused spontaneity and naturalness in the transfer of this scene, his figures look static, schematic and devoid of individuality. They resemble ancient frescoes, and the atmosphere of the painting is full of the feeling of time stopped. Seurat made sketches on the Grande Jatte during the day, and then in the studio he worked with canvas, using the “pointillist” (“dotted”) technique invented by him. As a result, the work turned out so unusual that Seurat's fans were quick to declare him "the messiah of the new art."

"The Harbor at Honfleur". 1886
Canvas, oil.
National Gallery,
Prague, Czech Republic.

Georges Seurat: Seurat A Corner of the Harbor of Honfleur, 1886,

Bridge at Courbevoie
1886-1887
45.7 x 54.7 cm
Courtauld Gallery, London

The curved branches of the tree are used to align the vertical shape of the rest of the composition. Later, this technique will be applied by Seurat in the film "Parade".

Deleted forms are transferred extremely schematically. A boat with two riders is depicted with only three short rows of dots.

Seurat's figures are absolutely similar to mannequins. This principle is not maintained so consistently anywhere else in the artist's work. The man seems as lifeless and motionless as one of the masts standing next to him.

Seurat shared the Impressionist affinity for reflections in water. Here the sail is written with many dots. The set of dots, indicating the reflection of the sail in the water, is much more "sparse".

This canvas depicts the Seine near the town of Courbevois, located a little further upstream than Asnières. The proximity of themes and geographic references makes it possible to compare the painting with Bathing in Asnières. And here and there foreground outlined by the diagonal of the river bank, and the distant bridge emphasizes the horizon line.

In addition, both works have in common the atmosphere of immobility, the feeling of frozen time. Their difference, so to speak, is only "climatic". In one case, it is a hot sunny day, in the other - a cold transparent autumn. The falling light still casts long shadows on the grass, but the figures on the canvas are reduced to silhouettes.

For this painting, Seurat painted two studies depicting a bridge and a section of a river bank. For the upper part of the picture, apparently, Seurat did not make preliminary sketches. Traces of correspondence that can be found here speak in favor of this assumption.

Georges Seurat: Seurat End of the Jetty, Honfleur, 1886,

Georges Seurat. "The Models". 1887-88
Oil, canvas. 39.4 x 48.7 cm. Private collection.
"The Models". 1887-1888
Canvas, oil. 78 3/4 x 98 3/8 inches.
Barnes Foundation, Marion, Pennsylvania

seated nude

Nude

Georges Seurat

Georges Seurat - Seurat Parade de cirque, 1887-88, 100x150.5 cm, detalj, Met
Georges Seurat - Seurat Parade de circus, 1887-88, 100x150.5 cm, detalj, Met

Georges Seurat. Seine at Grande Jatte, spring
1888
65x82
Canvas, oil
Brussels. Royal Museum of Fine Arts

Georges Seurat. Port-en-Bessin, Sunday. 1888
Oil, canvas. Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, The Netherlands.

The picture was painted in the summer on the coast of Calvados, in the town of Port-en-Bessin. In this small fishing port, with a small and industrious population, Seurat will begin to paint his landscapes. The artist took the work very seriously - he uses the theories of Charles Henri in a series of landscapes, and studies them very deeply.

He tries to include the positions of the scientist in more complex system, which preserves perspective and depth in the picture, while not losing its decorative value. Seurat's challenge is truly astonishing. The artist sets himself the task, on the one hand, to treat the picture as a flat surface with two dimensions, and on the other hand, to fit the image into the third dimension, which is due to the presence of perspective.

In the end, the artist could afford to freely interpret the views of the rocks or the embankments of Port-en-Bessin, changing them at his own discretion. However, he is prevented from doing this by the rejection of imagination, which cannot be explained only by Seurat's distrust of things beyond the control of reason. This rejection of the imagination comes from the depths of the artist's nature. Sera belongs to a rare breed of people who are so fascinated by reality that they cannot distort it. Words remain unfinished for them. In the case of Seurat, paints will also not be found.

In almost all landscapes, Seurat subjects various elements of marinas, which are built according to the laws of perspective, to slight deformations, achieving a tangible decorative effect. So in "Cranes and a Gap in the Clouds" the clouds pile up over the sea in winding lines. On the canvas “Entrance to the outport”, the sea is dotted with shadows of clouds invisible to the eye. This effect can be seen even more clearly in the painting “Sunday”, where the fabrics of the flags wriggle in wavy folds, which, from the point of view of surrealism, may look redundant. Their appearance is explained only by the desire for decorativeness.

Georges Seurat - Seurat Port-en-Bessin- The Outer Harbor at Low Tide, 1888

Georges Seurat - Seurat Port-en-Bessin- Entrance to the Harbor, 1888

Seurat's work in recent years is scenes in the port, figures of people bathing, scenes from the circus.

Georges Seurat - Seurat La Parade,
1888, 100x150.5 cm, oil on canvas,
metropo

The night scene is filled with the light of gas lamps resembling a row of stylized stars.
Bright alluring colors depict the inside of the circus, where the audience is waiting for man-made miracles.
The mustachioed face of the arena inspector brings him closer to the conductor in the Can-Can painting and the animal tamer in the Circus painting.
The "cropped" figures of the audience form the lower edge of the picture.
The flat, vague figures of the musicians make them look like puppets.
Sera loved carnivals and circus performances which became the subject of several of his paintings. This famous canvas depicts a parade in the circus of Korea. A parade was a small interlude performed by artists in front of the entrance to the circus in order to attract spectators. The composition of the picture is already habitually lined up with overlapping horizontals and verticals.

Night lighting gives Seurat the opportunity to experiment with unusual color combinations. A significant part of the canvas is covered with orange-yellow and blue dots, which are written, respectively, the light of gas lamps and the shadow. All other colors are muted and show through the yellow and blue dots.

Contemporary critics credit the artist with the fact that this picture is approaching abstract painting, but at the time she did not make much of an impression. She was coldly received at the Salon des Indépendants. Moreover, Seurat himself later deleted it from the list of his works.

Bridge and embankment at Port-en-Bessin
1888
67x84.5
Canvas, oil
Minneapolis (Minnesota). Art Institute

Seurat introduces into the composition of this canvas characters that have not yet been seen in any of his marinas. In addition to several silhouettes in the background, in the foreground, a child, a customs officer, a woman with some kind of burden are visible in stillness.

All the figures are frozen and petrified. However, their presence violates the perfect loneliness that is inherent in the rest of the author's marinas. Life invades his kingdom of loneliness, which is immersed in an absolute sleepy stupor - the kingdom of water, moorings and shores.

And it seems that the tide of life depicted in the picture and the vital forces, still restrained, will suddenly heat up and begin to suddenly break out, spreading everywhere - such an impression is produced by the element depicted in the picture.

On the canvas there is that gloomy force of the elements, which gives rise to all living things and dooms it to death in an elemental onslaught, in a triumphant and blind impulse.

Georges Seurat. Seine on the island of Grande Jatte in spring.
1888
Canvas, oil.
Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Belgium

Le Crotoy, upstream
1889
Canvas, oil.
Art Institute, Detroit, USA

In his work, we see color combinations based on precise optical analysis and carefully built linear composition.

In his short life Sera created only seven large canvases, so laborious and complex was the drawing technique he created.

Unfortunately, the artist died very young, at 32, from a severe infection, leaving a widow with a small child in her arms and in position.

Cliff, 1885

Georges Seurat painted large figurative compositions and landscapes. Studying the laws of color and light, optical effects, Seurat tried to create a scientific basis for solving color, light and air and spatial problems. Graceful in drawing, subtle in color combinations, Seurat's painting, with its mosaic-fractional structure, on the whole has a somewhat rational, abstract character. Seurat studied the scientific aspects of the perception of light and color and developed on their basis the painting technique of divisionism, writing with small dotted strokes of pure color.

Horses in the water
1883
Canvas, tempera.
Private collection

House among the trees
Around 1883
16x25
Wood, oil
Glasgow. Art Gallery and museum

Waiting by the shore

fishermen
1883
Wood, oil.
Musee d "Art Moderne de Troyes

Man in black

Georges Seurat. "Powdering Girl" (Powdering Woman). 1889-90
Oil, canvas. 95.5 x 79.5 cm. Courtauld Gallery, London, UK.

The shape of this outlandish pink ribbon echoes floral pattern wallpaper.

The dots surrounding the powder box in an arc represent a cloud of powder.

The mirror symbolizes vanity. Perhaps Seurat intended to sneer at the exaggerated attention that Madeleine paid to her appearance.

The size of the table, which looks ridiculously small, emphasizes the pomp of Madeleine's forms.

For a long time, critics could not agree on this strange painting, which depicts Madeleine Knobloch, Seurat's beloved. Many found the portrait almost satirical. Madeleine herself, apparently, was of a different opinion, because later, when Seurat's paintings jumped sharply in price, she decided to keep this canvas with her. In the first version, it also included a self-portrait of Seurat looking with delight at Madeleine. But the author listened to the opinion of one of his friends, who considered the portrait in this form obscene, and replaced himself flower vase.

Genealogically, the painting goes back to boudoir scenes popular in 18th-century French painting. As always, Seurat's laid-back (and sometimes strange) handling of details is noteworthy. It's not clear what the element on the left is upper corner paintings. In addition, there is an impression that under Madeleine's full skirt there is only one leg.

Boats, low tide, at Grandcamp

Georges Seurat: Seurat Georges The Bec du Hoc at Grandcamp Sun

Cancan
Date of painting: 1889-1890
Dimensions: 171.5 x 140.5 cm
Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo

Light areas are surrounded by a dark frame in the picture, enhancing the feeling of depth and unity of space.

The dancer's fan repeats the angle of the cane in the hands of the spectator burning with lust, which in itself is a phallic symbol.

The flute and fretboard of the double bass are written parallel to the high legs of the dancers, which should “double” the degree of fun

The stylized expression on the faces of the dancers is conveyed by simple slanted strokes, easily outlining lips, mustaches and narrow eye slits.

The bows on the dancers' shoes point upwards, just like the hem of their skirts and the straps on their shoulders.

From about 1887, Seurat began to make sketches in the Parisian variety shows. As a result, the cancan dance, which was considered not too decent, became the theme of one of his works. The canvas depicts night club"Japanese sofa", located near the artist's studio. In this work, a distinct echo of the "Parade" sounds, where real viewer is located just above the audience present in the picture, and the main event takes place on an elevated stage.

Seurat used dance to illustrate one of his "scientific" theories. Its essence is that a line drawn at one angle or another is capable of conveying a very specific emotion. So, for example, upwardly directed lines express joy. In accordance with this, Seurat built a series of lines at different angles in the Can Can, which, in his opinion, were to express the cheerful atmosphere of the club in a concentrated manner.

Man cleaning a boat
Around 1883
16x24
Wood, oil
London. National Gallery

Georges Seurat: Seurat Woman Seated by an Easel, ca 1884-88, 30.5x23.3 cm,

Georges-Pierre Seurat (December 2, 1859, Paris - March 29, 1891, Paris) - French post-impressionist painter, founder of neo-impressionism, creator of the original method of painting called divisionism, or pointillism.

Georges Seurat was born December 2, 1859 in Paris in rich family. His father, Antoine-Chrisostome Seurat, was a lawyer and a native of Champagne; mother, Ernestine Febvre, was a Parisian. Attended the School of Fine Arts. Then he served in the army in Brest. In 1880 he returned to Paris. In search of his own style in art, he invented the so-called pointillism - artistic technique conveying shades and colors using individual color dots. The technique is used in the calculation of the optical effect of merging small details when looking at an image at a distance.

Georges Seurat first studied art with Justin Lequin, a sculptor. After returning to Paris, he worked in the studio with two friends of his student period, and then set up his own workshop. Seurat gravitated towards strictly scientific method divisionism (theory of decomposition of colors). The operation of a raster display is based on the electronic analogy of this method. Over the next two years, he mastered the art of black and white drawing. In 1883, Seurat created his first outstanding work - a huge pictorial canvas "Bathers in Asnieres".

After his painting was rejected by the Paris Salon, Seurat preferred individual creativity and alliances with the independent artists of Paris. In 1884, he and other artists (including Maximilien Luce) formed the Societe des Artistes Indépendants creative society. There he met the artist Paul Signac, who would later also use the pointillism method. In the summer of 1884, Seurat began work on his own famous work- "A Sunday afternoon on the island of Grande Jatte."

At a certain period, Seurat lives with the model Madeleine Nobloch, whom he portrays in the work "Powdering Woman".

Seurat died in Paris on March 29, 1891. Seurat's cause of death is uncertain and has been attributed to a form of meningitis, pneumonia, infective endocarditis, and/or (most likely) diphtheria. His son died two weeks later from the same illness. Georges-Pierre Seurat was buried in the Pere Lachaise cemetery.

The founder of neo-impressionism, the creator of the original method of painting called "divisionism", or "pointillism".

Life creativity

After his painting was rejected by the Paris Salon, Seurat preferred individual creativity and alliances with independent artists in Paris. He and other artists (including Maximilien Luce) formed the Societe des Artistes Indépendants creative society. There he met the artist Paul Signac, who would later also use the pointillism method. In the summer of 1884, Seurat began work on his most famous work, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of Grande Jatte. The painting was completed two years later. Seurat made many drawings for her and several landscapes of the Seine. Some critics who have written about Seurat suggest that "Bathing" and then written "Grand Jatte" are paired paintings, the first of which depicts the working class, and the second - the bourgeoisie. Another opinion was held by the English aesthetician and art historian Roger Fry, who discovered the art of the Post-Impressionists to the English public. Fry highly appreciated the Neo-Impressionists. In "Bathing", in his opinion, Seurat's main merit was that he digressed from both the ordinary and the poetic view of things and moved into the area of ​​"pure and almost abstract harmony." But not all impressionists accepted the neo-impressionist work of Seurat. So Degas, in response to the words of Camille Pissarro, who was also carried away by pointillism, that the Grand Jatte is very interesting picture, caustically remarked: “I would have noticed it, but it’s very large,” hinting at the optical properties of pointillism, from which the picture seems to be a mess of colors up close. characteristic feature Seurat's style was his one-of-a-kind approach to depicting figures. Hostile critics certainly drew attention to this element of Seurat's paintings, calling his characters "cardboard dolls" or "lifeless caricatures." Seurat went to simplify the form, of course, quite consciously. The surviving sketches show that he, when required, was able to paint completely “living” people. But the artist sought to achieve the effect of timelessness and deliberately stylized the figures in the spirit of flat ancient Greek frescoes or Egyptian hieroglyphs. One day he wrote to his friend: “I want to bring the figures together modern people to their essence, to make them move in the same way as in the frescoes of Phidias, and arrange them on the canvas in chromatic harmony.

At a certain period, Seurat lives with the model Madeleine Nobloch, whom he depicts in The Powdering Woman (1888-1889). This "inconceivable woman in the grotesque dezabile of the 80s" (Roger Fry) is presented in terms of the same detachment and contemplation as the characters in his other paintings. The influence of the "Japanism" common in those years probably affected the image of Madeleine's toilet.

As well as "Parade" and "Cancan", the last, unfinished painting by Seurat - "Circus" (1890-1891) also belongs to the world of spectacles and performances in its plot. But if in the first two the point of view from the hall to the stage is given, then in the last acrobats and the audience are shown through the eyes of the one who performs in the arena - the clown, who is depicted from the back in the foreground of the picture.

Seurat died in Paris on March 29, 1891. Seurat's cause of death is uncertain and has been attributed to a form of meningitis, pneumonia, infective endocarditis, and/or (most likely) diphtheria. His son died two weeks later from the same illness. Georges-Pierre Seurat was buried in the Pere Lachaise cemetery.

• Famous sayings

  • Aesthetics. Art is harmony. Harmony is an analogy of opposites, an analogy of similar elements of tone, color, line, considered in accordance with the dominant and under the influence of lighting, in joyful, calm or sad combinations.
  • A joyful tone is a luminous dominant; joyful color is a warm dominant; joyful line - a line rising from the horizontal upwards. A calm tone is a balance of dark and light; calm color - balance of cold and warm colors; calm horizontal line. The sad tone is a dark dominant; sad color - cold dominant; sad line - a line going down from the horizontal
  • Technics. It is known that the impact of light on the retina has a certain duration, resulting in synthesis. The means of expression is an optical mixture of tones, colors (local color and color of illumination: the sun, a kerosene lamp, gas, etc.), that is, different light and reactions to it (shadows), according to the laws of contrast, gradation and radiation.

  (from a letter to the writer Maurice Beaubourg dated 08/28/1890).