Title: Embroidery; The Artist's Mother
Artist: Georges Seurat (French, Paris 1859–1891 Paris)
Date: 1882–83
Medium: Conté crayon on Michallet paper
Dimensions: 12 5/16 x 9 7/16 in. (31.2 x 24.1 cm)
Seurat was born in 1851 and sadly died at the age of 31. This only gave him a short period of time to establish a historic career in the world of Art. Yet, owing to his “unusually strong interest in the intellectual and scientific bases of art”, [Courthion, P. (2022) “Georges Seurat,” Encyclopedia Britannica. Available at: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Georges-Seurat.] he made a monumental impact on the development of modern art as we know it today.
He achieved this by applying his scientific interest in “Chevreul’s theories of the chromatic circle of light” [Courthion, P. (2022) “Georges Seurat,” Encyclopedia Britannica. Available at: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Georges-Seurat. ] to his painting practice, exploring how he could express tone in his work utilising the “effects that could be achieved with the three primary colours (yellow, red, and blue) and their complements”[Courthion, P. (2022) “Georges Seurat,” Encyclopedia Britannica. Available at: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Georges-Seurat. ], a technique which is known today as “Pointillism”.
Despite being renowned as the “founder of the 19th-century French school of Neo-Impressionism”, [Courthion, P. (2022) “Georges Seurat,” Encyclopedia Britannica. Available at: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Georges-Seurat. ] with his famous pointillism paintings such as “A Sunday on La Grande Jatte”, it is his unique approach to tonal drawings that I’ve been particularly focusing on for this research.
Predominately, he created these tonal drawings using a “medium-hard black crayon called Conté on thick Michallet paper with a pronounced texture” [“The zone (outside the city walls) by Georges Seurat” (2019). The Art Institute of Chicago. Available at: https://www.artic.edu/articles/729/the-zone-outside-the-city-walls-by-georges-seurat (Accessed: September 13, 2022).]. As well as utilising the paper’s grain to include texture in his work, and his skilful ability to lay down the Conté from the lightest touch to thick, impenetrable layers of the dark crayon, Seurat also employed “the judicious use of stumping (in which the medium, once applied, is
manipulated with pointed rolls of paper, leather, or cork”[Press release for GEORGES SEURAT’S LUMINOUS DRAWINGS EXHIBITION AT MoMA Available at: https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_press-release_387127.pdf?_ga=2.213239124.1782182034.1664500688-1332614412.1664500687 (Accessed: September 30, 2022).]
In so doing, Seurat was able to create dramatic luminosity, where his subject matter takes on an almost ethereal glow in “an effect Seurat called “irradiation”” [Press release for GEORGES SEURAT’S LUMINOUS DRAWINGS EXHIBITION AT MoMA Available at: https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_press-release_387127.pdf?_ga=2.213239124.1782182034.1664500688-1332614412.1664500687 (Accessed: September 30, 2022).]
In an exhibition created solely of Seurat’s drawings in 2007, the curator Ms. Hauptman summarises the collection as being “Bathed in light that shimmers around them, nurses,
street sweepers, elegant ladies, and a host of others emerge out of a mysterious, unreadable
darkness.” [Press release for GEORGES SEURAT’S LUMINOUS DRAWINGS EXHIBITION AT MoMA Available at: https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_press-release_387127.pdf?_ga=2.213239124.1782182034.1664500688-1332614412.1664500687 (Accessed: September 30, 2022).]
I think what strikes me most about his depiction of the characters he came across, is how the works reflect the era in which Seurat would have been creating these works. These glimpses into the bustling metropolis of 19th century Parisian nightlife would have been lit by flickering lamp light, which in turn would have meant his subjects would have been illuminated in ghostly unpredictable light. The flickering glow created by the candle lit lamps would have meant the light would never be harshly bright or static. I feel Seurat has captured that atmospheric subtle movement of the light, through his soft edges and use of representative shapes that create an impression of the subject as, in reality, it would have been near impossible to pick out all the details of the subject in the low light conditions.
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