A Sunday on La Grande Jatte is Georges Seurat’s masterpiece. The mural-sized painting depicts boaters and sunbathers at a riverfront park in Paris. Seurat worked on it methodically for two years, nearly completing it once using small, horizontal brushstrokes. But he decided to repaint much of it with smaller dots of color as he refined his pointillist technique. When Seurat first exhibited the painting in 1886, many art critics mocked its unusual style. Only a few people recognized that the work would be revolutionary.
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Connecting the Dots
Discover the details in Georges Seurat’s most iconic painting
Georges Seurat, A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, 1884. Oil on canvas, 81 3/4x121 1/4 in. (207.5x308.1cm). Inventory number: 1926.224 Helen Birch Bartlett Memorial Collection. Art Resource, NY
How do the sketches below relate to the finished painting above?
1. Seurat added this border of red, orange, and blue dots three years after the rest of the painting was completed.
2. A yellow pigment that Seurat used has faded over time, leaving the painting less luminous than it was originally.
3. He paints this dress with a combination of red, orange, and blue dots.
4. Seurat paints the modern figures in classical sculptural poses to give them a sense of permanence.
5. For the trees, Seurat uses green brushstrokes mixed in with analogous blues and yellows.
Study for La Grande Jatte, woman fishing, (1884, 1891), pencil, 13x10in. (30.8x23.8cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Photo by DeAgostini/Getty Images; Study for La Grande Jatte, 1884-5. Oil on wood, 7x11in. (17.5x26cm). Presented by Heinz Berggruen, 1995, NG6560 Room 43. The National Art Gallery. London, Great Britain.
6. Though this parasol appears orange, Seurat adds dots of complementary blue to make the color more vibrant.
7. Seurat’s pointillist style makes the figures appear flattened, but shadows and varied scale restore a sense of depth.
8. Up close, this purplish pom-pom is composed of dots of pure red and blue pigment.
9. Seurat used this black-and-white pencil sketch to work out the highlights and shadows for part of the final painting.
10. In this painted study, Seurat uses warm yellow brushstrokes and cool blue ones to give the grass highlights and shadows.
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