Seurat, Georges (zhôrzh sörä`), 1859–91, French neoimpressionist painter. He devised the pointillist technique of painting in tiny dots of pure color. His method, called divisionism, was a systematic refinement of the broken color of the impressionists. His major achievements are his Baignade (Tate Gall., London), shown in the Salon des Indépendants in 1884, and his masterpiece, Un Dimanche à la Grande Jatte (Art Inst., Chicago), completed two years later. He died of pneumonia at 31. Seurat is recognized as one of the most intellectual artists of his time and was a great influence in restoring harmonious and deliberate design and a thorough understanding of color combination to painting at a time when sketching from nature had become the mode. Other examples of Seurat's work are in the Barnes Foundation, Merion, Pa., and in the Louvre.

Bibliography

See catalog (ed. by A. Blunt and R. Fry, 1965); drawings (ed. by R. L. Herbert, 1966); complete paintings, ed. by J. Rewald and H. Dorra (1988); biographies by J. Russell (1985) and P. Courthion (1988).

Seurat, Georges (-Pierre)

(born Dec. 2, 1859, Paris, Fr.—died March 29, 1891, Paris) French painter. He entered the École des Beaux-Arts in 1878 and exhibited at the 1883 Salon, though he had already lost sympathy with its conservative policies. He studied scientific works in an effort to achieve scientifically the colour effects that the Impressionists had pursued, and developed Pointillism, the technique of juxtaposing tiny brushstrokes of contrasting colours to portray the play of light. Employing this method, he created huge compositions, including his masterpiece, Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (1884–86). He and other artists working in this style became known as Neo-Impressionists. As an aesthetic theorist, he explored the effects that could be achieved with the three primary colours and their complements.