150 years ago, December 2, 1859, was born French artist Georges Seurat, founder of the school of neo-impressionism. His creative path, spanning ten years, seems much brighter life path: Sera did not “make revolutions”, did not provoke the public, and his contemporaries remembered him as a closed, uncommunicative and independent person. Main love The artist was painting - for hours he could talk only about composition and color. But the relatives learned that Sera had a mistress and a son only after his death.
“He worked with frantic obsession and lived like a monk in complete solitude in his small workshop,” his contemporary, writer Arsen Alexander, recalled about the artist. Sera studied all his life, endlessly improving his painting technique, drawing, studying masterpieces of painting and, along with them, science books: works of Charles Blanc, Rud, Chevalier. This two-sided approach allowed the emergence of an original painting style, called “pointillism” (from the French point - point).
The essence of this artistic technique is to convey colors and shades on the canvas with separate strokes and is used to achieve the optical effect of fusion small parts when looking at a painting from a distance.
Start
Sera was born into a completely prosperous, although not without oddities, family. His parents did not live together: his father, Antoine Chrysost Seurat, was a bailiff in the town of La Villette and settled in his summer house, in the basement of which he set up a chapel with a gardener as an altar boy. He left his wife and son in Paris and visited them rarely, no more than once a week. But the parents never refused their son financial support, and Sera could work all his life without thinking about money.
Seurat became interested in painting at an early age; as a teenager he began visiting art courses at the municipal evening school, where he mastered the traditional style of writing, copying plaster casts and paintings by old masters.
Later, it was decided to continue his academic education at the School of Fine Arts, where Seurat entered in 1878 and where he studied painting under the guidance of Henri Leman, spending, according to the recollections of his contemporaries, all his free time in the School library.
In 1879, Seurat visited an exhibition of the Impressionists, whose works, especially Monet and Degas, made a strong impression on the artist - their brushwork, the “glow” of the paintings, and the lightness of the brush prompted Seurat to look for a way to “subordinate” this glow to the logic of natural laws.
The first big result of the search is the painting “Swimming in Asnieres” (1883, two by three meters), on which the artist worked whole year and which he hoped to exhibit at the Salon of 1884, which a year earlier accepted almost all of his works. By this time, he was already familiar with the book “The Grammar of Drawing” by Charles Blanc, according to which small strokes placed side by side on the canvas create the impression of a living vibration of the canvas. The manner, apparently, turned out to be too innovative: the picture is sent to the “Salon of Independents”.
Point by point
At this exhibition, Sera met Paul Signac, who later became his close friend and like-minded person. Together, Seurat and Signac develop the ideas of Chevreul, his theory of color for painting, Seurat studies the work of Ogden Nicholas Rood "Modern Theory of Colors".
Rood proved that optical mixing of the primary colors of the solar spectrum - red, yellow and blue - makes their tone brighter than mixing pigments. Artists come to the conclusion that paints do not need to be mixed, but strokes on the canvas must be applied separately from each other - “point by point.”
With new ideas, Seurat begins work on one of his most significant and, perhaps, famous works - “Sunday Walk on the Island of La Grande Jatte,” which he exhibited at the eighth and last exhibition of the Impressionists.
The public reacted ambiguously to the film, but mostly with misunderstanding, bewilderment and skepticism. Compared to the Impressionists who reigned at that time, Seurat's paintings seemed far-fetched and artificial to many. The Impressionists turned against him, it seems, the strongest of all. For example, American artist Theodore Robinson named new style"fly droppings." Degas also sneered at the canvas. In response to Pissarro’s words about the merits of La Grande Jatte, he replied: “Oh, I would have noticed that, Pissarro, but it’s very big,” hinting at the optical properties of pointillism, which, when viewed close up, turn the painting into a color mess.
On the contrary, Maurice Hermel called this painting “a manifesto of painting and the banner of a new school.”
Anyway, new artistic method did not go unnoticed - they talked about him, argued about him and, naturally, began to imitate him. This is how a group of neo-impressionists appeared, the creation of which was initiated by Signac. It included Albert Dubois-Pilier, Charles Angrand, Maximilian Luce and others.
After Seurat
Seurat's life ended unexpectedly: in March 1891, the artist fell ill while preparing for a new exhibition and died, it is believed, of meningitis. Its last and unfinished work, became the painting “Circus”, which the artist still managed to exhibit at the “Salon of Independents”.
A complete surprise for family and friends was that Sera had a mistress and a son. The artist met Madeleine Knobloch, a seamstress, two years before his death and hid this connection from relatives and friends even when their son Pierre Georges was born. Tragically, the one-year-old died from the same infection as Sera two days after his father died.
There were 42 paintings, 163 croquetons, 527 drawings and sketches left in Seurat's workshop, which became the subject of dispute for relatives and friends of Madeleine Knobloch. However, then these paintings were not worth big money: during his lifetime, Seurat managed to sell only a few of his works (300 francs for landscapes and 60 for drawings), and his painting “Models,” which the artist himself valued at 2,500 francs (7 francs per day of work) six years after death was sold for only 800 francs. In 1900, the artist's family sold "Grand Jatte" for 800 francs, "Circus" for 500 francs, and the drawings for 10 francs each.
Real recognition, as often happens, came to Sera years later, largely thanks to the efforts of friends who had done great job to analyze and systematize his paintings and organize posthumous exhibitions. An additional difficulty was that the artist usually did not sign his work. All paintings, sketches and drawings by Seurat in the studio were marked as genuine works, which became the basis for further study artist's creativity.
A year ago, in December 2008, Seurat’s drawing “Au divan japonais” was auctioned at Sotheby’s for 5 million euros.
The material was prepared by the editors of rian.ru based on open sources
In the community of young artists in Paris, he was one of the few who remained silent and smiled ironically, watching his fellow artists. The soul of the party, mysterious and incomprehensible Georges-Pierre Seurat All his short life he risked being rejected and was not afraid of it. He followed his own path, once chosen, and gave the world the foundations of neo-impressionism, which forever changed the face of painting.
During his lifetime, some found inspiration in Seurat's paintings, while others meticulously looked for flaws. Modern researchers are trying to find mysterious ciphers based on its most famous works, such as “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.” The creator of the pointillism genre tried to put as much soul as possible into his work, as if he knew that the time allotted on earth was negligibly short.
No one, not even friends from the so-called circle of “independent” artists, could boast that they knew Seurat well. Perhaps the roots of secrecy went far back to childhood, where Georges-Pierre, youngest child in the family, he was as if between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, a tired, somewhat indifferent mother, on the other, a father, a ministerial official, last years life with all passion devoted to religious feeling. The older brother and sister moved in the same atmosphere of lack of spiritual closeness and left their father’s house early. Deprived of a strong attachment to anyone, the boy began to be interested in art. Only it could make him break the silence and have inspired conversations with someone who was ready to listen and support. The parents did not see anything bad in these inclinations, nor, indeed, any good - they considered their duties fulfilled, because the family had capital that provided their children with a comfortable future.
Start creative path the artist was ordinary: in the class of a local painting school, Georges-Pierre Seurat and other students were poring over reproducing the outlines of plaster busts and paintings by old masters.
Having barely reached the age of 19, he was admitted to the School of Fine Arts. Here, too, preference was given to copying classical examples of craftsmanship, but Georges-Pierre had already discovered the beginnings of his own creative methods. They hit me right in the heart young man Impressionist works seen. Even, which he had been so keen on earlier, was pushed aside under the influence of this powerful impression.
Seurat did not give up his creative experiments, even when his homeland demanded that he repay his military duty. His regiment stood stationed for a long time, and there was almost always plenty of time. At the end of the year, Georges-Pierre Seurat returned to Paris and settled into his small studio, filling in the gaps in technology. During this period, he considered it a paramount task to comprehend the nature of light in a picture, for which he completed most of the sketches with ordinary chalk. The study of the work of the Impressionists continued, but another star appeared in Seurat’s coordinate system.
There is an opinion that it was under the influence of the works that he eventually came to his own color solutions. The young man’s unique memory contributed a lot to the improvement of his skills - everything, down to the slightest nuances of color and light, seen once, Seurat could subsequently easily remember and then reproduce. But the main discovery of the young painter was not paintings at all, but a solid treatise, written by Michel Eugene Chevreul. He, having devoted half his life to studying chemical properties materials in a dye shop, he developed the laws of color contrast, according to which different colors located next to each other gave a certain effect.
From the moment Seurat became familiar with Chevreul's work, light became the starting point in his paintings. To understand the nature of the combination of colors and the impression it created, he observed tirelessly, and at the same time moved further and further away from the manner of the Impressionists. Strokes of pure color, he believed, fade as they connect with each other. Seurat was looking for a means that could bring the breath of life to the canvas. He worked in the open air, traveling in search of inspiration all around Paris, so popular among local creative youth. Almost every day, for his exercises, he tormented the planks, which he used instead of canvas. He himself called them “croquetons.” These were sketches, studies where Seurat was still trying to comprehend the nature of contrast, the strange relationships of light, shadow and color. Just as greedily as before, he peered at the works of the Impressionists at exhibitions. These searches were bound to end in grandiose success.
In the spring of 1883, together with friends who had succeeded in academic painting much more, Georges-Pierre Seurat decided to exhibit his work at the nearest Salon. Ernest Laurent and Aman-Jean, friends of the painter, did not make a mistake when they presented the jury with paintings on traditional subjects - both received high awards. Georges-Pierre, in turn, received a very cool review of his portrait of Aman-Jean, and another work, depicting his mother embroidering, was not allowed to participate at all.
This reception did not cool Seurat’s ardor at all; almost immediately he began large-scale work over a canvas measuring two by three meters. From “croquetons”, sketches in a notebook, and endless observations of the walking public, “Bathers in Asnieres” was born.
Georges-Pierre Seurat was true to himself and his teachers - the composition, which was neglected by many impressionists, is maintained to the smallest detail, the picture is divided into mathematically verified zones, the color is separated into components and reassembled to pour out on the viewer as a stream of sun over the banks of the Seine.
It’s paradoxical how still places appear on his canvases that have hardly known summer boredom, how static nature is, faces, poses, and even a cry seems to have died down on the lips of the bather in the right corner. One of the most crowded corners of the Parisian suburbs is plunged into absolute silence on a clear summer day.
The jury's refusal was a crushing blow. Seurat was sensitive to the words of a critic who called the works of some authors “senseless, anemic and far-fetched,” and from then on he preferred not to have any relations with the official Salon. Thus, he went over to the side of the outcasts - artists whose paintings were also not recognized by critics. Here fate confronted the silent young man with Paul Signac, and this meeting became fateful. While Seurat was more interested in theories that allowed him to more accurately penetrate the structure of painting, Signac was able to discern and calculate the principles of his work, which gave rise to the name “pointillism” (or “divisionism”).
In the fertile atmosphere of the Salon des Refusés, Seurat again felt the need to create. It took almost two years to complete “Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte,” which was grandiose in scale and thoroughness. At the eighth, and last, exhibition of the Impressionists, the painting created a sensation.
In addition to negative reviews, new voices have emerged, heralding an era new school painting. WITH light hand criticism Seurat began to be considered the leader of the movement that would later be called “neo-impressionism.”
Subsequently, many artists considered themselves his followers. But in the first years, neo-impressionism was represented mainly by imitators of Seurat, who was rather unnerved by such fame. He closed in on himself, as if in school years. Even about the affair with the seamstress, from whom in 1890 Georges-Pierre had a son, named “mirror” Pierre-Georges, most of his friends and relatives did not know.
Amazing success " Sunday"and the subsequent period of artist's seclusion led to the fact that more late works were barely known to the public. Among them are the paintings "Cabaret", an image of the Eiffel Tower and the most modernist of the works - "Circus".
Serious illness overtook Seurat as he was preparing to break his silence and take part in new exhibition. In just three days, the charming, silent regular at the “Salon of the Rejected”, who sought to comprehend the secrets of the Universe on the scale of the canvas, was gone.
Georges-Pierre Seurat was 31 years old.
Georges-Pierre Seurat (December 2, 1859, Paris - March 29, 1891, Paris) - French post-impressionist artist, founder of neo-impressionism, creator of the original painting method called “divisionism” or “pointillism”.
Georges Seurat was born on December 2, 1859 in Paris into a wealthy family. His father, Antoine-Chrisostome Seurat, was a lawyer and a native of Champagne; mother, Ernestine Febvre, was a Parisian. Attended the School of Fine Arts. Then he served in the army in Brest. In 1880 he returned to Paris. In search of his own style in art, he invented the so-called pointillism - artistic device transferring shades and colors using individual color points. The technique is used to achieve the optical effect of merging small details when viewing an image from a distance.
Georges Seurat first studied art with Justin Lequin, a sculptor. After returning to Paris, he worked in a studio with two friends from his student period, and then set up his own workshop. Seurat gravitated towards strictly scientific method divisionism (theory of color decomposition). The operation of a raster display is based on the electronic analogy of this method. Over the next two years he mastered the art black and white drawing. In 1883, Seurat created his first outstanding work - the huge canvas “Bathers at Asnieres”.
After his painting was rejected by the Paris Salon, Seurat preferred individual creativity and alliances with independent artists in Paris. In 1884, he and other artists (including Maximilien Luce) formed the creative society Société des Artistes Independents. There he met the artist Paul Signac, who would later also use the pointillism method. In the summer of 1884, Seurat began work on his own famous work- “Sunday afternoon on the island of La Grande Jatte.”
At a certain period, Seurat lived with the model Madeleine Knobloch, whom he portrayed in the work “Powdering Woman.”
Seurat died in Paris on March 29, 1891. Seurat's cause of death is uncertain and has been attributed to a form of meningitis, pneumonia, infective endocarditis, and/or (most likely) diphtheria. His son died two weeks later from the same illness. Georges-Pierre Seurat was buried in the Père Lachaise cemetery.
Founder of neo-impressionism, creator of an original painting method called “divisionism”, or “pointillism”.
Life creativity
After his painting was rejected by the Paris Salon, Seurat preferred individual creativity and alliances with independent artists in Paris. He and other artists (including Maximilien Luce) formed the creative society Société des Artistes Independents. There he met the artist Paul Signac, who would later also use the pointillism method. In the summer of 1884, Seurat began work on his most famous work, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. The painting was completed two years later. Seurat made many drawings for her and several landscapes with views of the Seine. Some critics who have written about Seurat suggest that Bathing and the subsequent La Grande Jatte are paired paintings, the first of which depicts the working class, and the second the bourgeoisie. The English esthetician and art historian Roger Fry, who discovered the art of the Post-Impressionists to the English public, had a different opinion. Fry highly regarded the Neo-Impressionists. In “Bathing,” in his opinion, Seurat’s main merit was that he abstracted himself from both the everyday and the poetic view of things and moved into the area of “pure and almost abstract harmony.” But not all impressionists accepted Seurat’s neo-impressionistic work. So Degas, in response to the words of Camille Pissarro, who was also interested in pointillism, that “Grand Jatte” is very interesting picture, caustically remarked: “I would notice it, but it’s too big,” hinting at the optical properties of pointillism, from which up close the picture seems like a color mess. Characteristic feature Seurat's style was his unique approach to depicting figures. Hostile critics inevitably focused on this element of Seurat's paintings, calling his characters "cardboard dolls" or "lifeless caricatures." Sera went to simplify the form, of course, quite consciously. The surviving sketches show that, when required, he was able to paint completely “living” people. But the artist sought to achieve a timeless effect and deliberately stylized the figures in the spirit of flat ancient Greek frescoes or Egyptian hieroglyphs. One day he wrote to his friend: “I want to bring together the figures modern people to their essence, make them move in the same way as in the frescoes of Phidias, and arrange them on the canvas in chromatic harmony.”
At a certain period, Seurat lived with the model Madeleine Knobloch, whom he portrayed in the work “Powdering Woman” (1888-1889). This “unthinkable woman in the grotesque desabilia of the 80s” (Roger Fry) is presented in terms of the same detachment and contemplation as the characters in his other films. The influence of the “Japaneseism” widespread in those years was probably reflected in the depiction of Madeleine’s toilet.
Just like “Parade” and “Cancan”, Seurat’s last, unfinished painting, “The Circus” (1890-1891), belongs to the world of spectacles and performances in its plot. But if in the first two the point of view from the hall to the stage is given, then in the last the acrobats and the audience are shown through the eyes of the one who performs in the arena - the clown, who is depicted from the back in the foreground of the picture.
Seurat died in Paris on March 29, 1891. Seurat's cause of death is uncertain and has been attributed to a form of meningitis, pneumonia, infectious endocarditis, and/or (most likely) diphtheria. His son died two weeks later from the same illness. Georges-Pierre Seurat was buried in the Père Lachaise cemetery.
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Famous sayings
- Aesthetics. Art is harmony. Harmony is an analogy of opposites, an analogy of similar elements of tone, color, line, considered in accordance with the dominant and under the influence of lighting, in joyful, calm or sad combinations.
- A joyful tone is a luminous dominant; a joyful color is a warm dominant; a joyful line is a line rising from the horizontal upward. A calm tone is a balance between dark and light; calm color - balance of cold and warm colors; calm horizontal line. A sad tone is a dark dominant; sad color - cold dominant; sad line - a line going down from the horizontal
- Technique. It is known that the effect of light on the retina has a certain duration, resulting in synthesis. The means of expression is an optical mixture of tones, colors (local color and the color of lighting: sun, kerosene lamp, gas, etc.), that is, different light and reactions to it (shadows), according to the laws of contrast, gradation and radiation.
(from a letter to the writer Maurice Beaubourg dated 08/28/1890).
Georges Seurat is one of the most prominent representatives of the post-impressionism genre, the inventor of the pointillism genre, and a famous French artist.
Several decades before the birth of Georges, and throughout almost his entire life, impressionism dominated in France - a genre of painting, whose representatives sought to create a drawing technique that would make it possible to capture the most natural and believable real world in its mobility and variability, to convey your fleeting impressions and feelings. Let us note that it is not always correct to compare post-impressionism with impressionism, because when it comes to post-impressionism, you need to understand that this movement unites a large number of different methods and techniques that are not united by one school. Georges Seurat is a representative of this movement, but Vincent Van Gogh is also a representative of post-impressionism, although the manner of work of these two masters is radically different.
Among those who decided to deviate from the canons of already recognized impressionism and try to create a new style, there were three famous masters— Paul Gauguin, Georges Seurat and Paul Cezanne. By the way, it was Seurat who was closest to traditional impressionism - his works depict the natural, daily life Parisians. Note that Seurat created his own direction of post-impressionism, which is called pointillism. The essence of this painting technique is the use of dot strokes of a special shape and color. This style can be immediately recognized by such a feature as the lack of mixing of colors as such - canvases made in pointillism look as if they consist of dots.
Georges Seurat was born in 1859 in Paris. Being the son of wealthy parents, he never had to think about earning his own food or shelter. This gave him the opportunity to devote himself entirely to the study of painting. By the way, initially the master worked only with black and white drawings in order to master the tones. Sera also studied the properties of lines and their perception in humans. In his notes, theses were found about the direction of the lines prevailing in the picture being able to convey a certain mood and create the necessary atmosphere. For example, horizontal lines, according to Seurat, convey calm and serenity.
Sera is a supporter scientific approach to painting - he for a long time studied the theory of color decomposition to understand which combinations and shapes look most impressive and natural. It is the scientific view of color perception by the human eye, as well as precise calculations, formed the above-mentioned pointillism - in fact, the creation of complex paintings of high artistic value from dots different forms and flowers.
The master lived only a short time; he died at the age of 31. However, he left several masterpieces, as well as a style he invented, which is very complex and requires painstaking work. As can be seen in Seurat's work, creating a painting using specially selected dots creates very vibrant and natural colors that are perfectly perceived from different distances. The mixing of colors does not occur on the canvas, but as if on the retina of the viewer's eye.
One of the most famous paintings in the world. The original is now in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. The painting is a classic example of pointillism - if you look closely, it consists of many multi-colored dots. And if you move away and look from a distance, you can feel the atmosphere of a carefree weekend, when the townspeople go for a walk along the banks of the Seine River.
An unusually carefully thought out color scheme and precisely selected composition create a rich atmosphere of laziness, serenity and idleness - the rich residents of the coastal regions of the Seine were exhausted from the warm sun, everything is very leisurely, unhurried and even a little swaggering. Ladies cover themselves with umbrellas from the sun and walk their pets (in the foreground we can see an aristocrat with a monkey on a leash).
Let us note that quite a few critics destroyed this work - in negative reviews, as a rule, it was noted that “all the silhouettes are clear and bright, but when looking at the faces, only blurry, unformed images are visible, in which facial features are vaguely discernible. Because of this, all the people depicted on the canvas resemble some kind of inanimate figures.” However, during his lifetime the artist commented on such criticism, noting that he did not strive for careful drawing of faces; the most important task for him was to convey the situation and atmosphere.
Circus
The master's last work - he died before completing it, the final touches were applied by Luce, an impressionist artist and good friend Sulfur.
Georges Seurat often visited the Fernando Circus, staying late at the performances with his instruments. Another example of very careful and scrupulous work, considering that there are dozens of characters in the picture, and Sera worked with his usual method, drawing everything with dots. Again, we highlight the brilliant work with colors - the tones are soft, muted, immediately evoking memories of circus arenas.
The composition of the painting is very characteristic - the master did not seek to capture any specific moment, his goal was mood and atmosphere circus performance generally. The interior depicted in the picture, the characters and decorations are made in a similar color scheme and arranged to evoke fullness and wholeness.
