The Artist: Georges Seurat

Georges Seurat (top picture) (December 2, 1859 - March 29, 1891) was born in Paris, son of Antoine-Chrisostôme Seurat and Mme. Seurat, with whom he spend most of childhood along with his brother, Émile, and his sister, Marie-Berthe. Georges attended the École des Beaux-Arts starting in 1878, but did not last long in school and joined the military in 1879. After returning to Paris, Seurat rented a studio and small apartment, and began to paint full time.

Seurat's work was extremely influenced by color theory and it is at this point of his life that we believe he met and worked with French chemist Michel-Eugène Chevreul, whose theories of contrast, color, primary colors, and the visible spectrum were instrumental in Seurat's art moving forward (bottom picture). To explore more about the colors and techniques he used in his paintings, click through this link from ColourLex. To investigate the layers Seurat used in his paintings, check out these two x-ray scans of Seurat's Young Woman Powdering Herself. 

Seurat's first major work, Bathers at Asnières, was rejected by the Paris Salon, and instead he showed it at the Groupe des Artistes Indépendants in May 1884. Soon after, Seurat began working on La Grande Jatte (Un dimanche après-midi à l'Île de la Grande Jatte) and would work on it for the following two years with countless sketches and three drafts on canvas. In the summer of 1886, the painting was shown in the eighth and final Impressionist group salon. Seurat would continue to work, paint, and exhibit his work. In February of 1890, Seurat's mistress, Madeleine Knobloch, gave birth to his son Pierre-Georges Seurat. Madeleine and her son are the inspiration for Dot and her daughter, Marie. James Lapine details that Madeleine "gave [him] the freedom to imagine that perhaps Seurat had another mistress before or after Knobloch, and perhaps another child as well." This relationship and child would be kept a secret, even from his closest friends and his mother, until his death in March of 1891 at 31 years old.

La Grande Jatte would be left to his mother and then his brother, Émile. It now resides in the Art Institute of Chicago. Some of his other most prominet works include, Bathers at Asnières (1883), Young Woman Powdering Herself (1888), Models (Les Poseuses) (1886–1888), Circus (1891), and many sketches and studies for his larger paintings. If you would like a succinct video about Seurat and the painting, check here. Explore more about Seurat's sketches from this 2007 exhibit from the Museum of Modern Art.