Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte - Canvas Print

Began in 1884 and first exhibited in 1886, Sunday "Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte" by Georges Seurat was the most prominent and decisive consolidation of the Pointillist style, a short-lived process of Post-Impressionist painting invented by Seurat and the artist Paul Signac. The style consisted of deriving light elements from separate complementary colors juxtaposed on the canvas and finally made tangible by the retina of the eye. The vast interplay of all these singular color values on the canvas omits a truly radiant, visceral force. Having recently finished an iconic work of pre-Modernism, Bathers at Asnières, Seurat embarked on this large-scale composition, taking as its subject the same opposing bank of the river Seine. His subjects are the emerging middle-class, couples, families, and bachelors, who began to enjoy a new late-nineteenth century pursuit: leisure time. The subject was the perfect exploration for the artist's unique blend of mundane sterility and ethereal beauty. Based on in-depth research into optical mixing and chromatics, Seurat prepared for the large-scale work with no less that 33 painted studies and 28 drawings. Painting to the Impressionist technique of sketching outdoors, Seurat would not begin to capture the color elements until a particular part of the day. Taking as its location a section of the Seine northwest of Paris, the artist draws the viewer's attention towards the elegance and fashionable garments of his protagonists, capturing a harmonic moment where the brilliance of nature meets the fleeting tastes of an aspirational class.