size of the original painting: 7 feet x 10 feet
You can tell that Seurat visited this park often. It let him observe all the different people who came to enjoy it. And there is so much to discover! Look for a musician playing a hunting horn, an older couple, a monkey, and people on the water (how many can you find?).Fun Facts about A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte:
• It took Seurat two years to finish this painting. To prepare, he made about 60 studies. (Talk about a lot of practice!) Look at the sidebar to see what his very last study looked like before starting the final painting.• This painting is HUGE: 7 feet by 10 feet. That’s taller than most people and as long as a U-Haul truck. Seurat probably needed a ladder to paint the tallest corners!
Try This:
• Pick a person in this painting and tell a story about them.
• Use pointillism to create a picture: Draw your bedroom, a garden, a favorite animal, or anything you want!). Think about the shapes and where everything will go, then use dots of color with crayons or paint to finish it! See more on the Activities page (look for Pointillism).
Meet the Artist:
Georges Seurat was the youngest child of a very rich family. (He had an older brother and sister.) His first art teacher was a sculptor, which makes sense when you examine Georges’s paintings: his precise shapes look like he’s sculpting 2-dimmensional images with paint!
When Georges was 23, the prestigious Paris Salon accepted one of his drawings. The next year he entered another painting that was rejected—but Georges didn’t get discouraged! He gathered a group of artist friends to create their own group, called the Salon des Independants.
He also started working on his masterpiece, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. This painting uses a technique he and two friends invented called Pointillism. (Georges preferred calling it Divisionism). He and his friends realized that our eyes blend colors together when small bits of color are placed next to each other. Georges felt this optical blending made colors more intense. In Georges’s practice studies for A Sunday Afternoon, his bits of color are larger than in the final painting, where he used many small dots of color. (Look below to see his final study.)
Pointillism is a post-impressionism art. Compared to impressionists like Monet, Morisot, Cassatt, and Richardson who wanted their paintings to be spontaneous, post-impressionist painters like Seurat made art that is more precise. Seurat hoped his paintings would make people think about earlier painters and sculptors.
Where in the world: France
