Georges Seurat: 11 works

'"I see only science." Dissatisfied with the technique of the Impressionists, which he considered spontaneous and unmethodical, Seurat turned to color theory and optics to develop his own method of painting, which he called Divisionism.'

'By 1877, art-student Seurat had advanced from copying ancient sculptures and casts to drawing from live models at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. An Indian Man was probably drawn from life, but the sitter is very different from the standard, muscular male nudes who appear in sketches by Seurat and other academic pupils from this period.'

'The technique developed by Seurat in the early 1880s was based on the use of the contrast between black and white to define forms.'

'Though Georges Seurat created many portraits of his mother, none have the arresting sense of calm and simplicity seen in this drawing. Here, he filled almost the entire sheet with Madame Seurat's face.'

'Rather than drawing individual lines, he rubbed roughly textured paper with greasy Conté crayon, creating a large shadowy mass. By combining various densities of crayon--darker for the figure, light and feathery for the background--Seurat explored a concept he called "irradiation."'

'Seurat's use of short, unblended, strongly coloured brushstrokes has created a vivid and vibrant work.'

'Seurat spent the summer of 1886 in the resort town of Honfleur, on the northern French coast, a region of turbulent seas and rugged shorelines to which artists had long been attracted. But Seurat's evening scene is hushed and still.'

'Seurat used black Conté crayon to create gradations of tone on the textured paper, achieving effects akin to those in his pointillist paintings, in which he juxtaposed dots of pure colors that blended optically to produce another color.'

'Helene Kröller-Müller wrote the following about the purchase of 'Le Chahut' by the French artist Georges Seurat: 'When my youngest son saw it for the first time he said: "But mama, surely it's not possible for you to buy a dance?'

'This work was painted in the last summer of Seurat's short life at the seaport of Gravelines on the Channel coast of France near the Belgian border. Seurat's signature pointillist handling is evident, for example, in the mast where color is broken up into patches of blue, yellow and vermilion red.'

'Seurat interprets Charles Henry's theories on the psychological effects of line and colour as well those on the optical mixing of colours formulated by Chevreul and Hood.'