a sunday afternoon on the island of la grande jatte analysis
Seurat sought to capture the people of his Paris just as these eras immortalized their citizens. Or as he once put it to French poet Gustave Kahn, “The Panathenaeans of Phidias formed a procession. I want to make modern people, in their essential traits, move about as they do on those friezes, and place them on canvases organized by harmonies of color.”
Seurat re-stretched its canvas to allow for room to paint a border made up of red, orange and blue dots.
Oil on canvas – Art Institute of Chicago
La Seine Г la Grande-Jatte of 1888 shows the artist returning to the site of his most famous painting – A Sunday on La Grande Jatte painted two years prior. This later composition demonstrates Seurat’s continued interest in form and perspective, but reveals a much softer and more relaxed technique than La Grande Jatte. The soft atmosphere is made up of a myriad of colored dots that mix optically to mimic the effects of a luminous summer day.
Scholars see the painting of “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte” as a contrast to Seurat’s earlier project titled “Bathers at Asnieres” with the latter being doused in more light. The painting is believed to depict the social hypocrisy of the city as the park was used for prostitution at the time. The lady depicted with a fishing rod alludes to this particular theme. Scholars also believe that the painter intended to show the care-free spirit in Paris residents through showing different classes intermingling freely.
A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte is a painting by George Seurat.
«Остров» Сёра – преобразованная на современный лад цитата картины Пюви де Шаванна «Священная роща». Сёра заимствовал у Шаванна ощущение застывшего времени. Но у его вечности совсем иной вкус. У Пюви изображено происходящее на далеком мифическом острове, остров Сёра – реален. На смену музам Шаванна пришли проститутки. Так может выглядеть священная роща 1884 года.
«Воскресный день на острове Гранд-Жатт» был впервые показан на последней, восьмой выставке импрессионистов в 1886 году. Картину сразу же признали одним из величайших произведений современности. Работа над этим огромным полотном заняла у Сёра два года.
The question has been asked whether Seurat’s great work should be regarded as the necessary outcome of Impressionist ideas or as deliberately anti-Impressionist, and an answer might be that it contains elements of both. In pursuing the analysis of colour, Seurat carried on, though in more systematic fashion, what Monet and Pissarro had been doing. The division of colour was scarcely new, though the primary colours were more scientifically defined by the range he based on the spectrum; but he added to this divisionism or pointillism an equally elaborate and scientifically considered treatment of line in order to attain a harmonious unity of composition, which was distinct from the Impressionist aim of suggesting light, atmosphere and movement.
Under a blazing midafternoon summer sky, we see the Seine flooded with sunshine, smart town houses on the opposite bank, and small steamboats, sailboats, and a skiff moving up and down the river. Under the trees closer to us many people are strolling, others are sitting or stretched out lazily on the bluish grass. A few are fishing. There are young ladies, a nursemaid, a Dantesque old grandmother under a parasol, a sprawled-out boatman smoking his pipe, the lower part of his trousers completely devoured by the implacable sunlight. A dark-colored dog of no particular breed is sniffing around, a rust-colored butterfly hovers in mid-air, a young mother is strolling with her little girl dressed in white with a salmon-colored sash, two budding young Army officers from Saint-Cyr are walking by the water. Of the young ladies, one of them is making a bouquet, another is a girl with red hair in a blue dress. We see a married couple carrying a baby, and, at the extreme right, appears a scandalously hieratic-looking couple, a young dandy with a rather excessively elegant lady on his arm who has a yellow, purple, and ultramarine monkey on a leash.
However, the critics applauded such elements as the controlled surface of the painting, the use of aerial perspective, which gives an impression of space, and Seurat’s deeply shadowed foreground that leads into a light, bright distance.
Close-up of the paint on canvas in the Grand Jatte.
Your Bibliography: Art Encylopedia. 2018. Sunday Afternoon On The Island Of La Grande Jatte By Seurat. [online] Available at: .
These are the sources and citations used to research A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. This bibliography was generated on Cite This For Me on Tuesday, April 10, 2018
References:
http://m.theartstory.org/artist/seurat-georges/artworks/
http://www.worldatlas.com/articles/famous-artwork-a-sunday-afternoon-on-the-island-of-la-grande-jatte.html
http://arthive.com/georgesseurat/works/378112~Sunday_afternoon_on_the_island_of_La_Grande_Jatte
http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/seurat/grande-jatte/
http://www.webexhibits.org/colorart/jatte.html
http://www.citethisforme.com/topic-ideas/art/A%20Sunday%20Afternoon%20on%20the%20Island%20of%20La%20Grande%20Jatte-58404049
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Sunday_Afternoon_on_the_Island_of_La_Grande_Jatte