A Sunday on La Grande Jatte
The Circus
Seurat did not paint exactly what he saw. Instead, this young, rebellious artist worked in a more abstract style and went much further than the other Impressionists of his time. He started his own unique style of painting called “pointillism” that used little dots of color.
“I apply my methods, and that is all there is to it,” wrote Seurat, who considered himself more of a scientist than an artist. Seurat believed that all colors could be made up of yellow, red and blue dots. You can stand back from a Seurat painting and watch the tiny dots of color blend together to form different colors. This method had led directly to the modern color printing process used today. Look at a color photo in a newspaper with a magnifying glass and you will see that it is made up of colored dots.
Seurat was lucky that his family supported him because some of his paintings took almost a year to finish. Even though Seurat died at the young age of 31 after finishing only seven major paintings, his influence on art and printing will last forever.
The Circus, Copyright Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY
The Eiffel Tower, Photo courtesy of The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
