George Seurat
George
Seurat didn’t like using the impressionism style of painting
because of the soft brushstrokes. Instead, he liked using the
pointillism technique, that he designed and created with a fellow
artist named Paul Signac. Pointillism is using little close-packed
dots to create an object. After Seurat began using this technique,
many artists started using pointillism as well. One of Seurat’s
most well known pointillism paintings is his masterpiece, “A
Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte” (1884-1886).
If you have ever visited the Art Institute of Chicago, you may have
seen his masterpiece on a huge wall with many of his other
paintings.Seurat was born in Paris and he studied art there. He
adored Rembrandt and Francisco de Goya’s paintings as a child.
He went to military school for a year and then released the drawing,
“Aman-Jean”.
In
1884 he completed “Bathers”, a painting with a scene of
boys in the Seine River. His famous painting, “Sunday Afternoon
on the Island of the Grande Jatte,” was the most popular part of
an exhibit in 1886. Seurat began spending his winters in Paris,
drawing and finishing one large painting every year. In Seurat’s
life, he painted seven wall sized paintings, and 60 smaller paintings
and drawings. His artistic life was very successful.Two years before
Seurat passed away, he started living with a model named Madeleine
Krobloch. When Madeleine had a baby boy, Seurat became very secretive
and he did not tell anyone. His mother would have been shocked that
her brilliant son had fallen in love with a poor model. Before the
birth of Madeleine’s next child, Seurat had become very ill and
died of diphtheria on March 29, 1891 at the age of 31. The world lost
a remarkable artist.
