French Pointillist Painter, 1859-1891 Georges-Pierre Seurat (2 December 1859 ?C 29 March 1891) was a French painter and draftsman. His large work Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, his most famous painting, altered the direction of modern art by initiating Neo-impressionism, and is one of the icons of 19th century painting Seurat took to heart the color theorists' notion of a scientific approach to painting. Seurat believed that a painter could use color to create harmony and emotion in art in the same way that a musician uses counterpoint and variation to create harmony in music. Seurat theorized that the scientific application of color was like any other natural law, and he was driven to prove this conjecture. He thought that the knowledge of perception and optical laws could be used to create a new language of art based on its own set of heuristics and he set out to show this language using lines, color intensity and color schema. Seurat called this language Chromoluminarism. His letter to Maurice Beaubourg in 1890 captures his feelings about the scientific approach to emotion and harmony. He says "Art is Harmony. Harmony is the analogy of the contrary and of similar elements of tone, of color and of line, considered according to their dominance and under the influence of light, in gay, calm or sad combinations". Seurat's theories can be summarized as follows: The emotion of gaiety can be achieved by the domination of luminous hues, by the predominance of warm colors, and by the use of lines directed upward. Calm is achieved through an equivalence/balance of the use of the light and the dark, by the balance of warm and cold colors, and by lines that are horizontal. Sadness is achieved by using dark and cold colors and by lines pointing downwards.  Related Paintings of Georges Seurat :. | The Harness Carriage | Study for The Circus | Fisherman | Les Poseuses | Bathers |
Related Artists:
Giovanni Segantini
Italian Art Nouveau Painter, 1858-1899 Italian painter and draughtsman. An exponent of DIVISIONISM, he was the only Italian painter of the late 19th century to have enjoyed an unbroken international reputation, especially in Germany and Austria.
Benjamin Vautier
painted Kinder beim Mittagessen in 1857
Peale, James
American, 1749-1831 Painter, brother of Charles Willson Peale. Charles encouraged him to become a painter; James also worked as a frame-maker for his brother until the Revolution, in which he served as a lieutenant. From 1779 James shared Charles's practice, specializing in miniatures. His early work, occasionally confused with Charles's, shows his brother's influence. After 1794, his style became clearly his own: more delicate with subtle colour harmonies, softened outlines and free handling; it may be distinguished by a faint violet tone in the shadows and the inconspicuous signature 'IP'. His miniatures of male subjects are frequently superior to his portraits of women, for example Benjamin Harwood (1799; Baltimore, Mus. & Lib. MD Hist.), but his meticulous attention to costume and his success in imparting colour and sparkle to skin and eyes,