A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande
Picture “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande”
In 1884-1886, Georges Seurat, a French Post-Impressionist artist, painted his well-known picture “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande". In depicting a summer day in the park, somewhere in Paris, Seurat employs a concept based on the contemporary optical research on the resonance of the dabs of color on the retina of the viewer. Georges Seurat painted people relaxing in Suburban Park, a famous resting place for the rich Parisians. The artist had worked on the painting in several campaigns since 1884. Georges Seurat contrasts a miniature of small dots and small brushstrokes, which are perceived as a single shade when unified in the human eye. In order to make the experience of the painting even more vivid, Seurat enclosed the painted dots in a pure white wooden frame exhibited in the Art Institute of Chicago.
Later on, however, Seurat added small dots in complementary colors that created a solid and luminous picture when viewed from a distance. The painting, in general, shows a more formal and structured approach to art that became referred to as Neo-impressionism. Seurat’s Grande Jatte is among those unique works that stand alone in the field. It can be recognized instinctively by any individual interested in art. Its transcendence emanates from its theme, which is something more than capturing a momentous event or profound emotion; rather, it is the most prosaic of the workaday scene.
Georges Pierre Seurat was a French neo-impressionist painter who discovered and introduced the famous theory and practice of neo-impressionism. Georges Seurat used oil on the canvas and focused on the issues of light, color, and form. His paintings were approximately 2-3 meters (6 Ft 10 in by 10 Ft 1 in) in size. Seurat drew inspiration from the study of optical and color theories, an aspect that made him contrast the miniature color dots through optical unification to form a common image in the observer’s eye. Georges Seurat believed that such a manner of painting, known as pointillism, made the color more powerful and appealing than the standard brush strokes. In order to make the experience of the painting more vivid and intense, Seurat puts the work of art in the painted frames. For creating the picture, the artist used the Zinc Chromate pigment, seen on the lawn, and a mixture of blue and orange pigments.
For the painting, Georges Seurat used highly scientific and systematic approaches, which subsequently had become referred to as Pointillism. This detail distinguishes his unique style from more intuitive tools used by impressionists. Although Georges Seurat embraced a contemporary life subject matter of artists such as Pierre Renoir and Claude Monet, he went even a step forward to capture the accidental and instantaneous qualities of light in nature. Georges Seurat induced permanence by recalling the art of the past, especially the Greek and Egyptian sculptures. In 1889, Seurat made the final changes to the La Grande Jatte painting. The artist re-stretched the canvas in order to use the painted border of blue, orange, and red dots that revealed a transition between the painting interior and the white frame.
Georges Seurat’s painting demonstrates the public park and focuses on people’s shapes rather than their personalities. Besides, it is apparent that the artistic work is rather balanced, and thus eliminates the aspect of untidiness. The park is noisy with children and dogs running all around. However, Seurat created the impression of silence, control, and order. The artist stressed the issue of intellectual clarity that allowed him to paint the park with a lot of astonishing poetry. Although people in the painting are either in groups or pairs, they still appear separated in their concise form. In the painting, however, no figure encroaches on another person’s space; everything seems to co-exist in peace. Georges Seurat depicted both unreal and real-world in his painting.
Provocative Image of the Community
The name of Georges Seurat’s painting Grande Jatte translates as the Big Bowl island; this prominent work of art reveals the artist’s character. The painting draws a provocative image of the community, for which it faced massive criticism. Since the island is located a mile away from Paris, Seurat depicted the park as a perfect resting place for Parisian high society. As a result, he captured an interesting glimpse of a wealthy Parisian life of the 19th century. Consequently, the painting got a wide range of interpretations and criticism for being too mathematical. Although the painting was named a grand work of meticulous proportions, Seurat created a provocative image in his desire to champion the neo-impressionists. Before Seurat started painting, the impressionism genre had varied from previous works and focused on the landscapes, relying on spontaneity and color instead of a line. It had put the main emphasis on light in the painting and ideas of realism.
Furthermore, Seurat’s art appeared to be a provocation to the community because of the radical techniques such as pointillism and divisionism employed in the painting. Seurat’s initial ideas were rather classical and conservative ones, including his views on the painting style. However, Seurat resorted to the tradition of the great artists and thoughts; he considered every detail of his major paintings as if they were crucial figures through the subject matter. Furthermore, Georges Seurat used these small details to reflect the calmness of elegant, but emotionless people taking a leisure walk in the Sunday afternoon. Seurat used space, texture, and color for portraying common people in the common park but in a uniquely creative manner. In this artistic piece, Seurat created an illusion of space through the use of overlapping and foreground.
In Seurat’s painting, the figures in the forefront create the illusion of space. The texture of details gives a sense of beauty and realism. This is the pointillism style, which allows the viewers to observe each strand of the grass and each tree leaf. The color is crucial in Seurat’s painting style; the artist believed that every tiny color dot created a more vibrant effect than the ordinary brushstroke. A balance, unity, and emphasis form the key principles that make the painting distinctive and exquisite. The asymmetric balance is apparent, as the painting is heavily overstuffed on the right side. For instance, a woman and her husband on the right appear larger than other people and trees on the background as compared to the emptiness of the left side. Through the use of asymmetrical balance, the emphasis is put on the couple. Moreover, unity is presented in the busy right side as compared to the calm waters on the left. Furthermore, natural and green colors balance each other creating vibrant and colorful artwork.
Formal Elements
Upon close study of the artistic work, it is apparent that the diversity of Georges Seurat’s characters fails to show a thin unity of the social spectrum, including the low-middle class and perhaps some artisans. This aspect seems to undermine social unity in general. By eliminating such diversity, Seurat created a harmonic middle-class community, an idyllic peaceful place for having a rest on Sundays. An in-depth analysis reveals a variety of formal elements used in the work.
Composition
The balance in the Georges Seurat’s painting is well proportioned and positioned; it ensures that the entire work remains appealing to the eyes of the viewers. The river to the right side of the work shows a number of yachts and rowing boats balanced with large figures on the right side. In the middle of the painting, there are people engaged in different activities that make the central part of the painting appealing. Despite different activities in his painting, Georges Seurat made the entire piece possess a degree of statics and formality. However, depicting people facing sideways or straight makes the entire scene rigid.
Color Palette
Georges Seurat employs a blending technique through the use of shadows. In the traditional painting, shadows are represented in black color. In respect to the principles of pointillism, Georges Seurat painted the shadows with the colors that came into contact. The color of the skirts is the best example. The female figures in the middle of the painting cast a blue shadow on the ground. Nonetheless, Seurat’s shadows are not defined by traditional means but rather a combination of colors. In the painting, the green color gives a blue shadow that fails to follow the conventions of the shadow casting.
The Use of Light
The use of light is one of the unique tools of this painting. The techniques of pointillism are apparent where the light from the left to the right sides comes into contact with the objects and people in the painting. The combination of such colors forms the fundamental concept of pointillism, and Seurat employed it perfectly in his paintings. The tree line at the upper of the piece is a classic example of the blended effect. The luminous white in the upper section of the painting becomes white, and the vibrant green color of leaves appears. Furthermore, a mixture of green and white generates a yellow hue before it becomes fully green.
Many contemporary critics in the field of painting criticized Georges Seurat’s Grande Jatte at the time when the impressionist movement needed a new reverberation. Seurat’s monumental work was exhibited in the eight impressionist exhibitions alongside other famous artists such as Camille Pissarro and Lucien, both were the followers of Divisionism. However, Seurat’s artwork stood out in the exhibition as the most distinctive piece. Seurat’s painting researched the impressionist movements and eventually developed to a brand-new artistic movement known as neo-impressionism.
Individual and Collective Experience Foregrounded
Georges Seurat’s artistic work depicts individual and collective experiences that were foregrounded in the painting. The irregular brushwork of the impressionists, for instance, appeared to be an outgrowth of romanticism and individualism, though it was the effortless result of the higher class elegance. Through its impersonality, Seurat’s technique endorsed the social more than the personal, the ordered rather than the irregular, the universal and not the idiosyncratic part. Georges subordinated his painted people to the community of forms; he created a community, in which each figure had a predetermined place. Besides, it is apparent that his public park is characterized not only by order but also by companionship and some loving relationships. This way, the social malaise has no place in the painting. No one in the foreground is literally alone. A single person is found only in the middle or at some distance.
On the far right, two women sit by a pram, one with her arm around the child; at a slight distance, a girl in an orange dress runs across the grass. All other characters in the foreground are paired up, as well. The center is occupied by two figures; they remove all doubts that this could be a place devoted to scandalous encounter. Both a mother and child come towards viewers, and the child, embodiment of innocence, is the only person who looks at the painter. Beyond her, there are two soldiers, as well as the other two figures in front of them. In the distance, at the far right, a couple strolls away; to the left of the running girl, a woman raises her arms to the well-wrapped child that her husband holds.
Taking a closer analysis of the Georges Seurat’s painting, a viewer notes color and brushwork that appear to be diverse and animated. In the painting, a surface screen is created with the uniform dots; the strokes in the piece vary from small dots to long streaks that demonstrate Georges Seurat’s prowess in the field. The elongated dabs flow along the axis of the trunk and change direction to shift externally on the branches as if they are the true transferors of sap. Irrespective of this actual variety of touch, from a normal viewing distance, the brushwork seems nearly uniform, and it is this uniformity that has always attracted the attention of the viewers. However, it is still the most famous art piece that reflects pointillism clearly.
The dominant figure of the final composition seen closely is lightened with many grace notes such as butterflies, puffs of smoke from the cigar, floret, crossbows, caricature expressions, and a leaping dog. At a short distance, however, and in the reduced scale of any reproduction, one senses the geometric harmony. Through the darkened frame of the foreground shadow and the foliage above, the viewer looks into a lit plane that rises, exposing diagonal and horizontal shadows that not only mark off the receding death just like so many theater flats do, but also serve as pedestals for the figures and trees, embracing the humans into their environment. Most figures in the painting are in profile or are seen from the front or back; this flattens them and significantly contributes to the lack of involvement, structural and emotional connections with their neighbors, even when disposed of in pairs.
Things that Inspired Georges Seurat to Portray the Society
Georges Seurat was inspired by the desire to abandon impressionism preoccupation with the transitory moments; instead, he aimed to render what he referred to as unchanging and essential in life. However, Georges borrowed many approaches from impressionism ranging from the love of modern subject matter and urban leisure, and the desire to avoid portraying only the color of the objects. Instead, Seurat strived to capture all the colors in interaction to create a unique style. Nonetheless, Seurat was fascinated with a wide range of scientific ideas relating to the form, color, and expression of the object. Seurat believed that the line inclining in a set direction and color of certain warmth or coolness would create unique expressive effects. Furthermore, Seurat pursued the discovery that contrasting colors can optically mix to produce more vivid tones. This can be achieved by mixing the paint alone. As a result, Seurat developed a technique better known as Divisionism that was used to separate color into distinctive dots. Besides, Seurat developed the concept of pointillism that made it possible to apply tiny strokes of paints essential to achieve flickering effects on the surface of the paintings.
