Georges Seurat - Study for Les Poseuses [1886]

Georges Seurat - Study for Les Poseuses [1886], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

In his drawings, Seurat frequently employed Conté crayon, a medium that allowed him to achieve rich velvety textures and softly blurred contours. This sheet, one of three by the artist in the Robert Lehman Collection, is a preparatory sketch for one of Seurat's most famous works, Les Poseuses (The Models), now in the Barnes Foundation, Marion, Pennsylvania.

[Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York - Conté crayon on laid paper, 29.7 x 22.5 cm]

Georges Seurat - A Woman Fishing [1884]

Georges Seurat - A Woman Fishing [1884], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

[Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York - Conté crayon, 30.8 x 23.8 cm]

Georges Seurat - Circus Sideshow [1887-88]

Georges Seurat - Circus Sideshow [1887-88], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Circus Sideshow (or Parade de Cirque) is one of six major figure paintings that Seurat produced during his short career. More compact than his other mural-size compositions, and more mysterious in its allure, Seurat's first nocturnal painting debuted at the 1888 Salon des Indépendants in Paris. On a balustraded stage, under the misty glow of nine twinkling gaslights, a ring master (at right) and musicians (at left) play to a crowd of potential ticket buyers, whose assorted hats add a wry and rhythmic note to the foreground.

Seurat made on-site sketches in the spring of 1887, when Fernand Corvi's travelling circus was set up in a working-class district of Paris, near the place de la Nation; he then developed the composition through several preparatory studies. Circus Sideshow represents the first important painting Seurat devoted to a scene of popular entertainment. 

[Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York - Oil on canvas, 99.7 x 149.9 cm]

Georges Seurat - Study for 'Bathers at Asnieres [1883-84]

Georges Seurat - Study for 'Bathers at Asnieres [1883-84], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

This oil sketch is one of several Seurat made for his monumental painting, 'Bathers at Asnieres', of 1884. In contrast to the other sketches the artist has here concentrated on the figures themselves at the expense of the landscape setting. The reclining man and the figure in a swimming costume reappear in the final painting.

[Oil on wood, 15.2 x 25 cm]

Georges Seurat - Lighthouse at Honfleur [1886]

Georges Seurat - Lighthouse at Honfleur [1886], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

[Oil on canvas, 66.7 x 81.9 cm]

Georges-Pierre Seurat - View of Fort Samson [1885]

Georges-Pierre Seurat - View of Fort Samson [1885], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

In 1885, Seurat went to paint the sea, staying for several weeks at Grandcamp, a Normandy village on the coast of La Manche. Fort Samson was a fifteen-minute walk from Grandcamp. In placing the line of the horizon in this painting a little higher than the middle, Seurat attains a correlation between the earth and the sky that best expresses a feeling of tranquility. The motifs of Seurat's landscapes did not seem fundamentally new in comparison with the old Impressionists. But the differences in both mood and the application of paint, are enormous. While Monet and Renoir painted with brushstrokes which could be large or small, aimed at any direction, existing separately or merging with neighbouring strokes, the methods proposed by Seurat presupposed greater homogeneity and orderliness. His painting immediately begun to be called both divisionist, since it was based on separated brushstrokes, or pointillist, because the strokes were individual dots of paint. Most often, it was called Neo-Impressionist, because of its complex relationship with the art of Monet and Renoir.

[Oil on canvas, 65 x 81.5 cm]

Georges Seurat - Hospice and Lighthouse of Honfleur [1886]

Georges Seurat - Hospice and Lighthouse of Honfleur [1886], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

[Oil on panel, 15.8 x 25 cm]

Georges Seurat - Final Study for Bathers at Asnieres [1883]

Georges Seurat - Final Study for Bathing at Asnieres [1883], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Georges Seurat - Bathers at Asnieres [1884]

Georges Seurat - Bathers at Asnieres [1884], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Asnières is an industrial suburb west of Paris on the River Seine. The present work shows a group of young workmen taking their leisure by the river. This was the first of Seurat's large-scale compositions. He drew conté crayon studies for individual figures using live models, and made small oil sketches on site which he used to help design the composition and record effects of light and atmosphere. Some 14 oil sketches and 10 drawings survive. The final composition, painted in the studio, combines information from both. 

While the painting was not executed using Seurat's pointillist technique, which he had not yet invented, the artist later reworked areas of this picture using dots of contrasting colour to create a vibrant, luminous effect. For example, dots of orange and blue were added to the boy's hat. The simplicity of the forms and the use of regular shapes clearly defined by light recalls paintings by the Renaissance artist Piero della Francesca. In his use of figures seen in profile, Seurat may also have been influenced by ancient Egyptian art.

[Oil on canvas, 201 x 300 cm]

Georges Seurat - The Rainbow [1883]

Georges Seurat - The Rainbow [1883], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

This is one of a number of oil studies for the artist's Bathers at Asnières of 1884. Several of these studies were painted near Asnières in north-west Paris, and the design of this study is close to the finished painting. The picture retains the quality of an open-air sketch, but the detail is carefully delineated with small touches of paint.

[Oil on wood, 15.5 x 24.5 cm]

Georges Seurat - The Seine Seen From La Grande Jatte [1888]

Georges Seurat - The Seine Seen From La Grande Jatte [1888], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

This study formed the basis for a larger canvas now in the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels. Painted on a white surface, the colours are particularly light and brilliant. Seurat made several adjustments to the composition: the curve of the island was lowered at the bottom right and traces of a yacht are visible at the left.

[Oil on wood, 15.7 x 25 cm]