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 :. | A standing position of the Obverse | batbers at asnieres | Iron tower | Bath | Study for A Sunday on the Grande Jatte |
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George Carter
an artist of considerable merit, was born at Colchester. He was an exhibitor at the Royal Academy in 1775, when he sent 'A Wounded Hussar on the Field of Battle.' He afterwards painted 'The Dying Pilgrim,' 'The Siege of Gibraltar,' and many portraits. He is known as the painter of 'The Death of Captain Cook,' 'The Fisherman's Return,' and other popular works, which have been engraved. He died at Hendon in 1795.
Daniel Ridgway Knight
(March 15, 1839 - March 9, 1924) was an American artist born at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was a pupil at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, under Gleyre, and later worked in the private studio of Meissonier. After 1872 he lived in France, having a house and studio at Poissy on the Seine. Spring BlossomsHe painted peasant women out of doors with great popular success. He was awarded the silver medal and Cross of the Legion of Honor, Exposition Universelle, Paris, 1889, and was made a Knight of the Royal Order of St. Michael of Bavaria, Munich, 1893, and receiving the gold medal of honor from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, 1893. His son, Louis Aston Knight (1873 - 1948), is also known as a landscape painter.
William Ludwell Sheppard
American, 1833-1912