Museum of Fine Arts Boston a Sunday on La Grande Jatte

Painting by Georges Seurat

A Sunday Afternoon on the Isle of La Grande Jatte
Artist	Georges Seurat
Year	1884–1886
Medium	Oil on canvas
Subject field	People relaxing at la Grande Jatte, Paris
Dimensions	207.six cm × 308 cm (81.7 in × 121.25 in)
Location	Art Institute of Chicago

A Sunday Afternoon on the Isle of La Grande Jatte (French: Un dimanche après-midi à l'Île de la Grande Jatte) was painted from 1884 to 1886 and is Georges Seurat's most famous work.^[i] A leading example of pointillist technique, executed on a large canvas, it is a founding work of the neo-impressionist motion. Seurat's limerick includes a number of Parisians at a park on the banks of the River Seine. It is in the collection of the Fine art Institute of Chicago.

Background [edit]

Georges Seurat, Study for "A Lord's day Afternoon on La Grande Jatte", 1884, oil on canvass, 70.5 ten 104.one cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

In 1879, Georges Seurat enlisted every bit a soldier in the French army and arrived back home in 1880. Subsequently, he ran a small painter'due south studio in Paris, and in 1883 showed his piece of work publicly for the kickoff fourth dimension. The post-obit year, Seurat began to work on La Grande Jatte and exhibited the painting in the spring of 1886 with the Impressionists.^[ii] With La Grande Jatte, Seurat was immediately acknowledged as the leader of a new and rebellious form of Impressionism called Neo-Impressionism.^[3]

Seurat painted A Sunday Afternoon betwixt May 1884 and March 1885, and from October 1885 to May 1886, focusing meticulously on the mural of the park.^[4] He reworked the original and completed numerous preliminary drawings and oil sketches. He sat in the park, creating numerous sketches of the various figures in order to perfect their form. He concentrated on issues of color, light, and course. The painting is approximately two by three metres (vi.six ft × nine.eight ft) in size.

Inspired by optical furnishings and perception inherent in the color theories of Michel Eugène Chevreul, Ogden Rood and others, Seurat adjusted this scientific inquiry to his painting.^[five] Seurat contrasted miniature dots or small brushstrokes of colors that when unified optically in the human eye were perceived equally a single shade or hue. He believed that this form of painting, called Divisionism at the time (a term he preferred)^[six] but now known as Pointillism, would make the colors more bright and powerful than standard brushstrokes. The apply of dots of nearly uniform size came in the second twelvemonth of his work on the painting, 1885–86. To make the experience of the painting even more bright, he surrounded it with a frame of painted dots, which in turn he enclosed with a pure white, wooden frame, which is how the painting is exhibited today at the Art Plant of Chicago.

The Island of la Grande Jatte is located at the very gates of Paris, lying in the Seine betwixt Neuilly and Levallois-Perret, a short distance from where La Défense business commune currently stands. Although for many years it was an industrial site, information technology is today the site of a public garden and a housing development. When Seurat began the painting in 1884, the island was a bucolic retreat far from the urban middle.

The painting was first exhibited at the eighth (and terminal) Impressionist exhibition in May 1886, so in August 1886, dominating the 2d Salon of the Société des Artistes Indépendants, of which Seurat had been a founder in 1884.^[1] Seurat was extremely disciplined, always serious, and individual to the indicate of secretiveness—for the most part, steering his own steady form. As a painter, he wanted to make a divergence in the history of art and with La Thousand Jatte, many say that he succeeded.^[seven]

Interpretation [edit]

The left bank of working class Bathers at Asnières (1884) mirrors the right banking company of the suburbia on La Grande Jatte.

Seurat's painting was a mirror impression of his own painting, Bathers at Asnières, completed before long before, in 1884. Whereas the bathers in that earlier painting are doused in low-cal, well-nigh every figure on La Grande Jatte appears to be cast in shadow, either under copse or an umbrella, or from another person. For Parisians, Sun was the twenty-four hour period to escape the oestrus of the metropolis and head for the shade of the trees and the cool breezes that came off the river. And at showtime glance, the viewer sees many dissimilar people relaxing in a park by the river. On the correct, a fashionable couple, the woman with the sunshade and the man in his top lid, are on a stroll. On the left, some other woman who is as well well dressed extends her line-fishing pole over the water. There is a small-scale man with the blackness hat and thin cane looking at the river, and a white dog with a chocolate-brown head, a adult female knitting, a man playing a trumpet, two soldiers continuing at attention as the musician plays, and a adult female hunched under an orange umbrella. Seurat also painted a human with a pipe, a woman under a parasol in a gunkhole filled with rowers, and a couple admiring their infant child.^[8]

Some of the characters are doing curious things. The lady on the right side has a monkey on a leash. A lady on the left near the river banking company is fishing. The area was known at the time every bit being a place to procure prostitutes amid the bourgeoisie, a likely innuendo of the otherwise odd "fishing" rod. In the painting'due south center stands a little girl dressed in white (who is non in a shadow), who stares directly at the viewer of the painting. This may exist interpreted as someone who is silently questioning the audience: "What will become of these people and their class?" Seurat paints their prospects bleakly, cloaked as they are in shadow and suspicion of sin.^[nine]

In the 1950s, historian and Marxist philosopher Ernst Bloch drew social and political significance from Seurat's La Grande Jatte. The historian's focal signal was Seurat's mechanical use of the figures and what their static nature said virtually French society at the time. Afterwards, the work received heavy criticism past many that centered on the artist'due south mathematical and robotic estimation of modernity in Paris.^[8]

According to historian of Modernism William R. Everdell:

Seurat himself told a sympathetic critic, Gustave Kahn, that his model was the Panathenaic procession in the Parthenon frieze. But Seurat didn't desire to pigment ancient Athenians. He wanted 'to make the moderns file by ... in their essential form.' By 'moderns' he meant nix very complicated. He wanted ordinary people as his subject, and ordinary life. He was a bit of a democrat—a "Communard," equally ane of his friends remarked, referring to the left-wing revolutionaries of 1871; and he was fascinated past the mode things distinct and different encountered each other: the metropolis and the country, the farm and the manufacturing plant, the conservative and the proletarian coming together at their edges in a sort of harmony of opposites.^[ten]

The border of the painting is, unusually, in inverted color, as if the world around them is also slowly inverting from the way of life they have known. Seen in this context, the boy who bathes on the other side of the river bank at Asnières appears to be calling out to them, as if to say, "We are the hereafter. Come and join us".^[9]

Painting materials [edit]

Seurat painted the La Grande Jatte in three distinct stages.^[11] In the beginning stage, which was started in 1884, Seurat mixed his paints from several individual pigments and was even so using irksome earth pigments such as ochre or burnt sienna. In the second phase, during 1885 and 1886, Seurat dispensed with the earth pigments and besides express the number of individual pigments in his paints. This alter in Seurat'southward palette was due to his application of the avant-garde color theories of his time. His intention was to pigment minor dots or strokes of pure color that would then mix on the retina of the beholder to achieve the desired color impression instead of the usual exercise of mixing private pigments.

Seurat'southward palette consisted of the usual pigments of his time such as cobalt bluish, emerald green and vermilion.^{[12] [13]} Additionally, Seurat used and then new pigment zinc yellow (zinc chromate), predominantly for yellow highlights in the sunlit grass in the middle of the painting but besides in mixtures with orange and blueish pigments. In the century and more than since the painting's completion, the zinc xanthous has darkened to brownish—a color degeneration that was already showing in the painting in Seurat'south lifetime.^[xiv] The discoloration of the originally bright yellow zinc yellowish (zinc chromate) to brownish color is due to the chemical reaction of the chromate ions to orange-colored dichromate ions.^[xv] In the tertiary stage during 1888–89 Seurat added the colored borders to his limerick.

The results of investigation into the discoloration of this painting have been combined with further enquiry into natural aging of paints to digitally rejuvenate the painting.^[16]

Acquisition past the Art Establish of Chicago [edit]

On display at the Art Institute of Chicago

In 1923, Frederic Bartlett was appointed trustee of the Fine art Institute of Chicago. He and his 2nd wife, Helen Birch Bartlett, loaned their collection of French Mail service-Impressionist and Modernist fine art to the museum. It was Mrs. Bartlett who had an interest in French and avant-garde artists and influenced her husband's collecting tastes. Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte was purchased on the advice of the Fine art Plant of Chicago'southward curatorial staff in 1924.^[17]

In conceptual artist Don Celender'south 1974–75 volume Ascertainment and Scholarship Exam for Art Historians, Museum Directors, Artists, Dealers and Collectors, it is claimed that the institute paid $24,000 for the work^{[17] [18]} (over $354,000 in 2018 dollars^[19]).

In 1958, the painting was loaned for the only fourth dimension: to the Museum of Modern Fine art in New York. On 15 April 1958, a fire there, which killed one person on the 2d floor of the museum, forced the evacuation of the painting, which had been on a flooring above the fire, to the Whitney Museum, which adjoined MoMA at the time.^[twenty]

In popular culture [edit]

Topiary Park in Columbus, Ohio, replicates much of the painting

The May 1976 upshot of Playboy featured Nancy Cameron—Playmate of the Calendar month in January 1974—on its encompass, superimposed on the painting in similar way. The often subconscious bunny logo was disguised every bit ane of the millions of dots.^[21]

The painting is the ground for the 1984 Broadway musical Sunday in the Park with George by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine, which tells a fictionalized story of the painting'southward creation. Subsequently, the painting is sometimes referred to by the misnomer "Lord's day in the Park".

The painting is prominently featured in the 1986 comedy film Ferris Bueller'due south Day Off, in a scene later parodied, among others, in Looney Tunes: Dorsum in Activeness, Family Guy, and Muppet Babies.^{[ citation needed ]}

In the Simpsons episode "Mom and Popular Art" (10x19), Barney Gumble offers to pay for a beer with a handmade reproduction of the painting. The painting is also parodied in the picnic scene at the end of the episode "Super Franchise Me" (26x3).

In Topiary Park (formerly Old Deaf School Park) in Columbus, Ohio, sculptor James T. Mason re-created the painting in topiary class; the installation was completed in 1989.^[22]

The painting was the inspiration for a commemorative poster printed for the 1993 Detroit Belle Isle Grand Prix, with racing cars and the Detroit skyline added.

In 2011, the cast of the US version of The Office re-created the painting for a poster to promote the bear witness's seventh-flavor finale.^[23]

The comprehend photo of the June 2014 edition of San Francisco magazine, "The Oakland Issue: Special Edition", features a scene on the shore of Lake Merritt that re-creates the poses of the figures in Seurat's painting.^[24]

The painting is featured in the Fauna Crossing video game series as a purchasable furniture item under the proper name the "Calm Painting".

On the 2d of December 2021, the painting was used as part of an hommage to Georges Seurat by Google in ane of its doodles.^[25]

[edit]

External video
Georges Seurat, A Sunday on La Grande Jatte – 1884, 1884–86, Smarthistory.[26]

• 

  Study for La Grand Jatte

• 

  Die Insel La Grande Jatte mit Ausflüglern, 1884

• 

  Paysage et personnages, 1884–85

• 

  Groupe de personnages, 1884–85

• 

  Esquisse d'ensemble, 1884–85

• 

  Femmes au bord de l'eau, 1885–86

• 

  Models (Les Poseuses) 1886-1888

See also [edit]

• 100 Great Paintings

References [edit]

1. ^ ^{a b} Seurat, Georges. "A Sunday on La Grande Jatte — 1884". The Fine art Constitute of Chicago . Retrieved 17 May 2021.
2. ^ Clayton, Southward. Hollis (1996). Tomlinson, Janis (ed.). The Family and the Male parent: The 'Grand Jatte' and Its Absences . Readings in Nineteenth-Century Art. Prentice Hall. p. 212-213. ISBN978-0-1310-4142-4.
3. ^ Chu, Petra x-Doesschate (2012). Nineteenth-Century European Art (3rd ed.). Prentice Hall. pp. 414–417. ISBN978-0-1319-6269-nine.
4. ^ Dorra, Henri; Rewald, John (1959). Seurat: L'œuvre peint, Biographie et Catalogue Critique (in French). Paris: Les Beaux-Arts. p. 156.
5. ^ Herbert, Robert (1968). Neo-Impressionism . New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. p. 106.
6. ^ Galitz, Kathryn Calley (2007). Masterpieces of European Painting, 1800–1920, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Fine art. p. 177. ISBN978-ane-58839-240-4.
7. ^ Herbert, Robert L.; Neil Harris; Georges Seurat (2004). Seurat and the making of 'La Grande Jatte . Chicago: Art Found of Chicago in clan with the University of California Press. ISBN978-0-5202-4210-iv.
8. ^ ^{a b} Burleigh, Robert (2004). Seurat and La Grande Jatte: connecting the dots . New York: Harry N. Abrams. ISBN978-0-8109-4811-2 . Retrieved 27 November 2021.
9. ^ ^{a b} "Georges Seurat: A Sunday Afternoon on the Isle of La Grande Jatte". The Private Life of a Masterpiece. Series iv. 2005. BBC Two.
10. ^ Everdell, William R. (1997). The First Moderns: The Commencement Moderns: Profiles in the Origins of Twentieth Century Thought. Chicago: Academy of Chicago Press. p. 67. ISBN978-0-2262-2481-7 . Retrieved 27 November 2021.
11. ^ Fiedler, Inge (2004). La Grande Jatte: A Study of the Painting Materials. Seurat and the Making of La Grande Jatte. University of California. pp. 110–113.
12. ^ Fiedler, Inge (1989). "A Technical Evaluation of the 'Grande Jatte'". Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies. fourteen (2): 173–179, 244–245. doi:10.2307/4108750. JSTOR 4108750.
13. ^ "Georges Seurat, 'Sunday afternoon on La Grande Jatte'". ColourLex.
14. ^ Cuff, John (1993). Color and Civilization: Practice and Pregnant from Antiquity to Brainchild. Boston: Little, Brown. pp. 220, 224. ISBN978-0-5202-2225-0.
15. ^ Casadio, Francesca; Fiedler, Inge; Grey, Kimberly A.; Warta, Richard (2008). Bridgland, Janet (ed.). "Deterioration of zinc potassium chromate pigments: elucidating the furnishings of pigment composition and environmental atmospheric condition on chromatic alteration". 15th Triennial Briefing Preprints, New Delhi, 22–26 September 2008. Paris: International Council of Museums: 572–580. ISBN9788184243468.
16. ^ Berns, Roy S. (2006). "Rejuvenating the color palette of Georges Seurat'southward A Sunday on La Grande Jatte—1884: A simulation". Color Research & Awarding. 31 (4): 278–293. doi:ten.1002/col.20223.
17. ^ ^{a b} "The Art Establish of Chicago, A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, 1884". Archived from the original on xx September 2016. Retrieved 10 May 2012.
18. ^ Celender, Don (1974–75). Observation and Scholarship Examination for Fine art Historians, Museum Directors, Artists, Dealers, and Collectors. Publication was produced for an exhibition held at the O.Grand. Harris Gallery, 383 West Broadway, New York, from 7 to 28 December 1974. pp. Question: Page five, Answer: Page 23.
19. ^ "CPI Inflation Calculator". Archived from the original on iv August 2016. Retrieved 3 November 2013.
20. ^ Kihss, Peter (sixteen Apr 1958). "Fire in Modern Museum; Most Art Safe; 6 Canvases Burned, Seurat's Removed". The New York Times. p. 1.
21. ^ "Stagerism Warning: Seurat". Lucass Pivey. 7 March 2010. Archived from the original on 28 June 2013. Retrieved 27 November 2021.
22. ^ "The Topiary Park: A Unique Interpretation of a Painting". The Topiary Park. Archived from the original on 20 October 2013.
23. ^ Hibbert, James (sixteen May 2011). "First Await: NBC's amazing new 'The Office' poster". Entertainment Weekly. Archived from the original on 26 October 2015. Retrieved 27 November 2021.
24. ^ "The Oakland Consequence". San Francisco. June 2014. Archived from the original on 26 February 2015. Retrieved 26 February 2015.
25. ^ "Google rend hommage ce jeudi à ce maître de la peinture : qui était Georges Seurat". Sud Ouest. December 2021.
26. ^ "Seurat, A Lord's day on La Grande Jatte". Smarthistory at Khan Academy . Retrieved 23 April 2016.

Further reading [edit]

• Herbert, Robert Fifty.; Robert Herbert; Georges Seurat; Gary Tinterow; Françoise Cachin; Anne Distel; Susan Alyson Stein (1991). O'Neill, J (ed.). Georges Seurat, 1859–1891. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. ISBN978-0-8109-6410-v.
• William R. Everdell, The First Moderns: Profiles in the Origins of Twentieth Century Idea (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).
• "Firey Peril in a Showcase of Modernistic Fine art". Life. 28 Apr 1958. pp. 53–55.

External links [edit]

• Seurat and the Making of La Grande Jatte
• La Grande Jatte – Inspiration, Analysis and Critical Reception
• A Sunday on La Grande Jatte — 1884 at The Fine art Institute of Chicago
• Georges Seurat, 1859–1891, MoMA exhibition catalog
• Georges Seurat, Sunday Afternoon at La Grande Jatte, ColourLex
• Roch, Christine L. "From "Rube Town" to Modernistic Metropolis". Archived from the original on fifteen October 2012. Retrieved iv Baronial 2011.

Share this post