Georges-Pierre Seurat was a Neo-Impressionist painter, who trained at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris where he was taught by a disciple of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, who in turn had been taught by Delacroix. After taking a year from his studies for military service, Seurat exhibited his drawing Aman-Jean at the official Salon in 1883 and was heralded as a bright new star of French art. However, the following year his painting Bathers at Asnières caused controversy at the Salon and was rejected. This spurred Seurat and several of his colleagues to found the Societe des Artistes Independants. This Society of Independent Artists staged their own exhibitions and, in time, these art shows eventually became more popular and relevant than those of the official Salon.
Often referred to as “the first Modernist masterpiece”, this is a large oil on canvas (just over 10 feet across) that began the shake-up of modern art. The size of the canvas was shocking because of its subject matter. Such large canvasses were the preserve of important historical subjects, but Seurat thought that these ‘noble workers’ were as important as the people in grand historical paintings hung in museums.
His technique was also a great innovation. The green colour of the grass, for example, is made up of dots of pure colours including yellow, pink, blue and orange, yet our eye mixes these colours to give the vivid grass green of summer meadows. This is the beginnings of Pointillism (painting small dots of pure colour with just the tip of a brush), though it is used alongside smoother, blended brushstrokes here.
Although the scale of the figures are inconsistent, the composition closely follows the Golden Section rules of classic Renaissance paintings, also aligning this working class scene with the great works of art exhibited in palaces and state museums. It was produced as France neared the centenary of its Revolution and therefore was explicitly political, and intentionally critical of the governing elite.
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Image of
this painting at London's
National Gallery Collection on-line
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