georges seurat sailboat painting

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Man painting a boat

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Georges Seurat, 'Bathers at Asnières', 1884

This large picture was Seurat’s first major composition, painted when he had not yet turned 25. He intended it to be a grand statement with which he would make his mark at the official Salon in the spring of 1884, but it was rejected.

Several men and boys relax on the banks of the Seine at Asnières and Courbevoie, an industrial suburb north-west of central Paris. Shown in profile, they are as immobile as sculptures and each seems absorbed in his own thoughts, neither engaging with each other nor with us. Suffused with bright but hazy sunlight, the entire scene has an almost eerie stillness to it, as if time has been suspended and all movement temporarily frozen. In the background there is a railway bridge that partly hides a parallel road bridge, as well as the chimneys of the gas plant and factories at Clichy, where some of the men may work.

This large picture was Seurat’s first major composition, painted when he had not yet turned 25. He intended it to be a grand statement with which he would make his mark at the official Salon in the spring of 1884. It shows several men and boys relaxing in the sun on the banks of the Seine, between the bridges at Asnières and Courbevoie, north-west of central Paris. In the background is a railway bridge that partly hides a parallel road bridge, as well as the chimneys of the gas plant and factories at Clichy, where some of the men may work. Recreational sailboats can be seen on the river.

When Seurat studied the location in preparation for the painting, there would have been a path along the embankment as well as run-down houses and villas, boatyards, workshops and lower-class cafes and restaurants. The exposed sand in the middle of the riverbank on the left is the reason for the painting sometimes being titled Une baignade (‘a bathing place’). The term did not imply a middle-class idea of recreation by the water, but instead signified a place of work. It was used, for example on maps of the river, to indicate places where horses and dogs could be bathed and watered. It was this practice, and the dragging of boats in and out of the water, that formed the sandy gully.

Although Seurat was often drawn to similar subjects and sites as the Impressionists, and employed the same colour theories, his treatment was radically different. Not only is this picture much larger than most Impressionist paintings, but it was executed in the studio rather than outdoors in just one or two sessions. In contrast to the spontaneity of Impressionist works, Seurat’s picture was meticulously planned. He completed a series of preparatory oil sketches of the site and numerous conté crayon life drawings of the figures. Of these, some 13 oil sketches and 10 drawings survive. Two oil Studies for Bathers at Asnières are also in the National Gallery’s collection.

The men’s clothing (the bowler hat, boots and sleeveless vest) and demeanour (for example, the slight slouch of the seated boy and his blunt profile) suggest that some of them are either workers or lower middle class. However, none are engaged in traditionally ‘masculine’ activities such as labour or sport – even the two in the water do not appear to be swimming. By way of social contrast, a bourgeois couple, complete with parasol and top hat, are being ferried across the river in a boat bearing a triclore flag. Their oarsman is the only person in the picture who is working. Although the painting does not convey an obvious political statement, Seurat’s depiction of working-class recreation – as distinct from Impressionist scenes of bourgeois leisure (of which the boating couple are a reminder) – was a challenge to artistic tradition, as the grand scale was more appropriate for history and academic painting.

The men and boys on the riverbank are as immobile as sculptures. Seurat also shows them in profile, as if in a frieze, their smooth bodies defined by unbroken outlines. Although they occupy the same small area of riverbank, each seems absorbed in his own thoughts, neither engaging with each other nor with us. Suffused with bright but hazy sunlight, the scene has an almost eerie stillness, as if time has been suspended and all movement temporarily frozen. Seurat has enhanced this effect by not showing activities one might expect to see – for example, no horses are being bathed (although several of the preparatory studies do include them) – and by presenting this stretch of the river as if it were a well-maintained park.

Seurat had a traditional academic training at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where he learned to draw from classical sculptures; several of the bathers’ poses reflect this. On the far right, the boy standing in the water with his hands cupped to his mouth evokes the Greek water god Triton blowing his conch shell. Seurat also studied paintings in the Louvre, and in this picture the simplicity of forms, use of regular shapes defined by light and the pale, almost alabaster skin tones recall paintings by the Renaissance artist Piero della Francesca, especially his Arezzo frescoes.

But there are also more contemporary associations. Seurat admired Puvis de Chavannes (with whom he was compared), and aspects of his painting are also features of Puvis’s work: its scale (which recalls a mural rather than an easel painting), the semi-nude figures arranged in lateral planes like a classical relief and a composition based upon clear geometrical principles. Puvis’s painting Doux pays (‘gentle landscape’) (Musée Bonnat, Bayonne), which was exhibited at the 1882 Salon, particularly anticipated elements of Seurat’s picture. However, unlike Puvis, who kept modernity at a distance, Seurat found order, harmony and perhaps even a heroic grandeur in the modern world.

Seurat was soon to go on to create pointillism, a technique that employed tiny dots of complementary colours. This picture is not painted in the pointillist style of his later works, such as The Channel of Gravelines , although he did repaint parts of it using this technique – for example, the orange hat was reworked later with spots of yellow and blue. Despite the painting’s classicising features, Seurat’s application of paint is modern. For example, he used broad brushstrokes for the water. This follows the precedent of Monet and Renoir, who had both painted this part of the river – the railway bridge in the background is the same as that in Renoir’s The Skiff , a painting also based upon complementary colours.

Seurat’s painting was rejected when submitted to the Salon, and he subsequently exhibited it at the newly formed Salon des Artistes Indépendants. His second monumental picture, Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte of 1885 (Art Institute of Chicago), shows the same stretch of river but looking across it from the other side. The clump of trees on the right behind the bourgeois couple in the boat (who may have been added later as a link between the two pictures) is the tip of the island. La Grande Jatte was a location for middle-class leisure from which the workers we see here are separated both spatially and socially. Two oil Studies for La Grand Jatte are also in the National Gallery’s collection.

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Articles and Features

A Legacy of Dots and Daubs Georges Seurat: The Post-Impressionist Artist Who Pioneered Pointillism

By Alice Godwin

The French Post-Impressionist Georges Seurat is credited as the inventor of an extraordinary new manner of painting, which left art lovers (literally) seeing spots. Seurat’s dots of pure paint captured life in nineteenth-century France, from ladies strolling along the banks of the River Seine to performers on the gaslight stages of Paris. Seurat conjured these shimmering fabrics of color using a technique that was dubbed “Pointillism,” so called for its touches or “points” of paint, like atomic particles, which reflected a radical new way of seeing the world.

But who was the man behind the spots?

Georges Seurat: Biography

Georges Pierre Seurat was born in 1859 to a prosperous family in Paris, at a time when the architect Georges-Eugène Haussmann was reshaping the city along the frontiers of grand new boulevards. Shy and intelligent, Seurat trained at the École Municipale de Sculpture et Dessin and the École des Beaux-Arts, and spent his formative years copying the casts of classical sculptures and Old Master artworks in the Musée du Louvre. Seurat spent his military service in Brest sketching the beaches, boats, and sea, before setting up a studio near to the Moulin Rouge upon his return to Paris.

Though Seurat’s life was cut tragically short at the age of thirty-one, his influence on western art history has been profound. Ardent followers of Seurat have included Camille Pissarro , Théo van Rysselberghe , Hippolyte Petitjean, Henri-Edmond Cross , and his most notable disciple, Paul Signac. Even in the world of contemporary art, artists like Chuck Close have paid homage to Georges Seurat.

Seurat’s magnificent Les Poseuses, Ensemble (Petite version) (1888) broke records for the artist when it was sold at Christie’s New York in November 2022 as part of the estate of Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft, for just over $149.2 million (including fees).

Neo-Impressionism

It was the art critic Félix Fénéon who coined the term “Neo-Impressionism” to describe a new artistic movement led by Seurat. In contrast to the spontaneity of Impressionism and the fleeting effects of light and color over haystacks and water lilies that had captivated Claude Monet , Seurat developed an analytical style, which viewed color as a mathematical problem to solve.

Seurat harnessed the broad brushstrokes and radiant palette of the Impressionists, but did not paint in one fell swoop outdoors. Rather, he relied upon careful planning and studies of his subject. Seurat’s practice was indebted to the scientific writings of chemist Michel Eugène Chevreul and physicist Ogden Rood. He was particularly fascinated by their thoughts on color theory, and the suggestion that pure pigments when placed alongside one another could possess a greater intensity than when they are mixed together.

Seurat’s artworks were also deeply influenced by classical art, inspired perhaps by his academic training. He explained: “I want to make modern people, in their essential traits, move about as they do on those [classical] friezes, and place them on canvases organized by harmonies of color.”

Pointillism

The term “ Pointillism ” was initially used by critics to poke fun at Seurat’s systematic use of color. Seurat himself referred to his tapestry of contrasting and harmonious hues as “Divisionism.” Seen from a distance, these spots vibrate and dissolve into one another to conjure luminous forms.

Artworks by Georges Seurat

Though Seurat is chiefly remembered for his Pointillist paintings, he was also a master draughtsman. Here is a breakdown of some of Seurat’s most celebrated artworks.

Iconic Paintings

During his brief, yet sensational career, Seurat created seven large-scale paintings, which he referred to as his “canvases of combat.”

Bathers at Asnières (1884)

Seurat’s first major painting was Bathers at Asnières , now in the collection of The National Gallery in London. In this miraculous work, a veil of heat and bright sunshine hangs over a scene of leisure by the River Seine. A young man, with his bowler hat, clothes, and boots discarded, lowers his feet into the cool water, while others lie lethargically on the grass. They are remarkably still, as if too hot to move. The smoking chimneys in the background suggest that these are the workers of a local factory taking their break.

Seurat pictures the working and middle classes at play on the same dramatic scale as the mythological and historical subjects on the walls of the Louvre. Painted when he was not yet twenty-five, Bathers at Asnières shook the foundations of the establishment and was refused by the Salon. Instead, the painting was shown at the rival Salon des Indépendants, established by Seurat and a handful of other avant-garde figures of modern art at the time.

A Sunday on La Grande Jatte — 1884 (1884/86)

A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte by Georges Seurat, in The Art Institute of Chicago, is often viewed as a counterpoint to the Bathers at Asnières — the upper classes on La Grande Jatte facing the workers in the suburb of Asnières on the opposite side of the river. Paul Signac described A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte as a “manifesto painting,” as it epitomized Seurat’s Pointillist technique. On a quiet Sunday afternoon, Seurat depicts corseted women with their parasols and gentlemen with top hats and canes enjoying their leisure time. Curiously, Seurat later added a border of spots around the painting to form a barrier between the picture and its frame, like a lens.

Signac once famously said that Seurat’s artworks on paper were “the most beautiful painter’s drawings in existence.” In many ways, Seurat’s drawings in conté crayon, on the textured surface of Michallet paper, offer an insight into his exploration of light and dark, of volume and space, through translucent veils and velvety layers of black. They reveal the changing world of Paris at the turn of the century and the process behind some of Seurat’s greatest masterpieces.

Relevant sources to learn more

More from Artland Magazine Read about Post-Impressionism Learn about Pointillism Read about other Post-Impressionist artists Vincent van Gogh Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

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Pointillism Through The Eyes of Seurat

Delve deeper into 'the bridge at courbevoie' (around 1886-87) by french artist georges seurat..

By The Courtauld Institute of Art

Man painting a boat (circa 1883) by Georges Seurat The Courtauld Institute of Art

A Pioneer of Pointillism

Georges Seurat (1859-1891) was a painter working in Paris at the end of the 19th century. He is best known as a key figure in developing the technique of Pointillism.

Bridge at Courbevoie (1886/1887) by Georges Seurat The Courtauld Institute of Art

Seurat enjoyed painting scenic landscapes such as beaches, where he could observe people relaxing and enjoying nature.

This charming body of water that Seurat painted can be identified as the River Seine, which flows through Paris.

Here we see Seurat adeptly using the technique of pointillism. Pointillism is a technique of painting in which the artist paints by applying thousands of tiny dots, or points, of colour.

Altogether, the side-by-side coloured dots mix in the viewer’s eyes and brain, creating a dynamic coherent image.

An example of optical mixing, in the viewer’s eyes the perceived blending of adjacent marks creates the perception of a combined colour.

The blending of colour increases with distance.

Seurat's use of pointillism created harmonies of light and colour, which provided the silvery effect of sunlight filtering through the clouds.

Contrastingly, stillness is emphasised by the isolated figures on the river bank.

It is also emphasised by the vertical pattern of the trees and boat masts.

Observing other details, the factory chimney in the distance is a reminder that the town of Courbevoie was a rapidly industrialising suburb of Paris.

The melancholy and quietness of the painting are juxtaposed by the perceived dynamism evoked from the effect of oscillating dots.  Following the technique of pointillism, Seurat believed that the new optical theories of the time would make his pictures more vibrant.

Explore more of The Courtauld's collection .

Georges Seurat (1859 -1891), Bridge at Courbevoie , 1886, Oil on Canvas, 46.4 x 55.3cm, © The Samuel Courtauld Trust, The Courtauld Gallery, London

Explore more of The Courtauld's collection . Georges Seurat (1859 -1891),  Bridge at Courbevoie , 1886, Oil on Canvas, 46.4 x 55.3cm, © The Samuel Courtauld Trust, The Courtauld Gallery, London

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The Encyclopedia of Georges Seurat Paintings

Georges Seurat

Georges Seurat (1859-1891) was a French post-Impressionist artist known for his innovative painting techniques and his role in the development of Neo-Impressionism.

Born in Paris, Seurat studied at the École Municipale de Sculpture et Dessin and later at the École des Beaux-Arts, where he was taught by Henri Lehmann.

Seurat's artistic personality combined qualities that are usually thought of as opposed and incompatible: on the one hand, his extreme and delicate sensibility, on the other, a passion for logical abstraction and an almost mathematical precision of mind.

His large-scale work A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (1884–1886) altered the direction of modern art by initiating Neo-Impressionism, and is one of the icons of late 19th-century painting.

Georges Seurat

(1859-1891)

Who Was Georges Seurat?

After training at the École des Beaux-Arts, Georges Seurat broke free of tradition. Taking his technique a step beyond Impressionism, he painted with small strokes of pure color that seem to blend when viewed from a distance. This method, called Pointillism, is showcased in major works of the 1880s such as "A Sunday on La Grande Jatte." Seurat's career was cut short when he died of illness on March 29, 1891, in Paris.

Georges Pierre Seurat was born on December 2, 1859, in Paris, France. His father, Antoine-Chrysostome Seurat, was a customs official who was often away from home. Seurat and his brother, Emile, and sister, Marie-Berthe, were raised primarily by their mother, Ernestine (Faivre) Seurat, in Paris.

Seurat received his earliest art lessons from an uncle. He began his formal art education around 1875 when he began attending a local art school and studying under sculptor Justin Lequien.

Artistic Training and Influences

From 1878 to 1879, Seurat was enrolled at the famous École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where he received training under artist Henri Lehmann. However, feeling frustrated with the school's strict academic methods, he left and continued to study on his own. He admired the new large-scale paintings of Puvis de Chavannes, and in April 1879, he visited the Fourth Impressionist Exhibition and saw radical new works by Impressionist painters Claude Monet and Camille Pissarro. The Impressionists' ways of conveying light and atmosphere influenced Seurat's own thinking about painting.

Seurat was also interested in the science behind the art, and he did a good deal of reading on perception, color theory and the psychological power of line and form. Two books that affected his development as an artist were Principles of Harmony and Contrast of Colors , written by chemist Michel-Eugène Chevreul, and Essay on the Unmistakable Signs of Art , by painter/writer Humbert de Superville.

New Approaches and Neo-Impressionism

Seurat exhibited a drawing in the annual Salon, a major state-sponsored exhibition, for the first time in 1883. However, when he was rejected by the Salon the following year, he banded together with other artists to found the Salon des Indépendants, a more progressive series of unjuried exhibitions.

In the mid-1880s, Seurat developed a style of painting that came to be called Divisionism or Pointillism. Rather than blending colors together on his palette, he dabbed tiny strokes or "points" of pure color onto the canvas. When he placed colors side by side, they would appear to blend when viewed from a distance, producing luminous, shimmering color effects through "optical mixing."

Seurat continued the work of the Impressionists, not only through his experiments with technique but through his interest in every day subject matter. He and his colleagues often took inspiration from the streets of the city, from its cabarets and nightclubs, and from the parks and landscapes of the Paris suburbs.

Major Works

Seurat's first major work was "Bathers at Asnières," dated 1884, a large-scale canvas showing a scene of laborers relaxing alongside a river outside Paris. "Bathers" was followed by "A Sunday on La Grande Jatte" (1884-86), an even larger work depicting middle-class Parisians strolling and resting in an island park on the Seine River. (This painting was first exhibited in the Eighth Impressionist Exhibition in 1886.) In both works, Seurat tried to give modern-day figures a sense of significance and permanence by simplifying their forms and limiting their details; at the same time, his experimental brushwork and color combinations kept the scenes vivid and engaging.

Seurat painted female subjects in "The Models" of 1887-88 and "Young Woman Powdering Herself" of 1888-89. In the late 1880s, he created several scenes of circuses and nightlife, including "Circus Sideshow" (1887-88), "Le Chahut" (1889-90) and "The Circus" (1890-91). He also produced a number of seascapes of the Normandy coast, as well as a number of masterful black-and-white drawings in Conté crayon (a mix of wax and graphite or charcoal).

Death and Legacy

Seurat died on March 29, 1891, in Paris, after a brief illness that was most likely pneumonia or meningitis. He was buried in the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris. He was survived by his common-law wife, Madeleine Knobloch; their son, Pierre-Georges Seurat, died a month later.

Seurat's paintings and artistic theories influenced many of his contemporaries, from Paul Signac to Vincent van Gogh to Symbolist artists. His monumental "A Sunday on La Grande Jatte," now at the Art Institute of Chicago, is considered an iconic work of late 19th-century art. This painting, and Seurat's career, inspired Steven Sondheim to write the musical Sunday in the Park with George (1984). The work is also featured in the John Hughes film Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986).

QUICK FACTS

• Name: Georges Pierre Seurat
• Birth Year: 1859
• Birth date: December 2, 1859
• Birth City: Paris
• Birth Country: France
• Gender: Male
• Best Known For: Artist Georges Seurat is best known for originating the Pointillist method of painting, using small dot-like strokes of color in works such as "A Sunday on La Grande Jatte."
• Astrological Sign: Sagittarius
• École des Beaux-Arts
• Nacionalities
• Interesting Facts
• Seurat's masterpiece "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte" inspired Stephen Sondheim to compose the musical "Sunday in the Park with George."
• Death Year: 1891
• Death date: March 29, 1891
• Death City: Paris
• Death Country: France

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CITATION INFORMATION

• Article Title: Georges Seurat Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
• Website Name: The Biography.com website
• Url: https://www.biography.com/artist/georges-seurat
• Access Date:
• Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
• Last Updated: July 17, 2020
• Original Published Date: April 2, 2014
• They see poetry in what I have done. No. I apply my methods, and that is all there is to it.

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Georges Seurat Biography

French painter Georges Seurat garnered international acclaim, and is known predominantly in the historical canon for his pioneering of the Neoimpressionist technique known as Pointillism; a mode identifiable by its use of small dots, or points, of paint that together, and viewed from afar, create a cohesive image. Though his life and career were short – he died at the young age of 31 – his artistic innovations influenced subsequent generations of artists, from Vincent van Gough to the Futurists.

Seurat was born in Paris, France, in 1859. He began studying under Henri Lehmann, a student of Ingres, at the École des Beaux Arts in 1878. In 1883, he exhibited for the first time at the official Salon, but the following year the Salon’s jury rejected his submissions. The rejection inspired Seurat along with fellow artists Paul Signac, Odilon Redon, and others to found the Société des Artistes Indépendants, which began holding an annual Salon des Indépendants that operated outside the stringent policies of the official Salon. It was around this time that Seurat, along with Signac and Henri-Edmond Cross, began developing Divisionism – which he would later term Pointillism. The object of this method was to create the appearance of natural light through points of paint placed closely together, so that when viewed they would meld together.

Around 1884, Signac introduced Seurat to leading Impressionist painter Camille Pissarro, who even began employing Pointillism in his own work for a time. In the summer of the same year, Seurat began working on what would become his most well-known and iconic work, La Grande Jatte , which he completed and exhibited in 1886. The work was well received by critics, and particularly interested fellow artists who were drawn to the novel technique it exhibited.

Following the success of La Grande Jatte , Seurat began work on other significant works, such as Le Cirque (1891), but during the installation of a Salon des Indépendants he fell critically ill and died in 1891. Due to the briefness of his career, his oeuvre consists of few works –some estimate there are less than 50 paintings. Nevertheless, his aesthetic innovations and pioneering techniques left an indelible mark on the history of Western art, and many of his paintings are in major museum collections such as the Art Institute of Chicago, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, the State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, and the Musée d’Orsay, Paris, among others.

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