.jpg?picon=694)
by Renee Kirchner, Teaching Tips Contributing Editor
Georges-Pierre Seurat was born in Paris on December 2, 1859, in Paris. His mother was very affectionate, but his father was a solitary person. Like his father, Georges kept to himself. He attended the School of Fine Arts in Paris in 1878 and 1879. Georges studied the works of Rembrandt and Francisco de Goya.
His family had plenty of money and they supported him while he worked on his paintings. His first major painting was Bathers at Asnieres, which he painted in 1883. In the painting, people are cooling off from the summer heat on the banks of the Seine River.
His most famous painting is Sunday on the Island of La Grande Jatte. The painting showed people relaxing on an island in the Seine River on a sunny afternoon. The painting was started in the summer of 1884 and was completed two years later. Georges sketched scenes every morning for several months and worked in his studio during the afternoon.
La Grande Jatte is one of his first paintings in which he used his new painting technique known as Pointillism. He placed thousands of tiny dots side by side on the canvas. This method of painting was very slow and painstaking. Some people criticized his work, but others thought he was creating a new style of art.
In 1891, he experimented with different ways to use lines in his paintings to show emotion. The painting called The Circus used upward-slating lines to show happiness, horizontal lines to suggest calm, and downward-sloping lines to express sadness.
Seurat died unexpectedly at age thirty-one of meningitis. He will always be remembered for his original method of painting.
Art Exercises to Try at Home:
1. Select a page from a coloring book. Make a copy of it. Fill in one copy by painting with large brush strokes. Fill in the second copy by painting with little dots of paint. (Q-tips work well for this). Which picture took longer to paint? Which one do you like better?
2. Try this mixing experiment – Mix up the following colors:
- orange (red + yellow)
- purple (red + blue)
- green (blue + yellow)
Using a paintbrush, apply a circle of each color to a piece of paper. On a second piece of paper, draw three circles. Apply dots of blue and red inside the first circle, dots of red and yellow inside the second circle, and dots of yellow and blue inside the third circle.
Hold up the second piece of paper. What do you see? Does your eye mix the color for you? Can you see purple, orange and green?
3. Draw an entire picture using only straight lines. You will use the lines to show emotion. Upward slanting lines show happiness while downward sloping shows sadness. Lines that go horizontally give the feeling of calmness. Draw the lines very close together and try to cover most of the paper. (Ex: If you were drawing the still, calm water on a lake you would use horizontal lines.)
4. Georges Seurat painted many landscape pictures. Make a landscape picture of your own by cutting shapes and figures out of construction paper. Place the large objects at the bottom of the page. They will appear to be close to you. Place the smaller objects near the top of the page.
5. Purchase some blank postcards from an office supply store or the post office. Paint a postcard for a friend. Using small brushes and colorful paints create a mini masterpiece. Mail the painting to a friend to brighten their day.
Books About Seurat
George Seurat by Mike Venezia
Sunday w/Seurat by Julie Merberg
Seurat and la Grande Jatte: Connecting the Dots by Robert Burleigh