The Angler

This solitary angler appears in Georges Seurat's iconic Sunday Afternoon on the Île de la Grande Jatte (Art Institute of Chicago), begun in 1884. Seurat made more than fifty preparatory studies for this monumental canvas, which depicts a crowd at leisure on an island on the Seine, just outside of Paris. Although some studies are devoted to the landscape setting, most focus, like this one, on the individual figures who populate the final work.