Houses and Garden (Primary Title)
Georges Seurat, French, 1859 - 1891 (Artist)
Seurat’s career began along the typical path followed by most young artists in France during the 19th century. He learned Academic painting from Ingre’s pupil Henri Lehmann at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, studied the works of early Italian and 17th-century French painters at the Louvre, and exhibited some of his earliest artistic accomplishments at the Salon. Already during this formative period, however, he created drawings using conté crayons that produced a unique scintillating effect. That radiant quality resulted from Seurat’s extremely subtle developments of tonal variations, and he continued to explore optical effects of this kind even as his brush began insinuating his awareness of Impressionism. He was ultimately concerned with expressing light in abundance, leading him to adapt the most recent scientific theories of color and light in his painting techniques. This landscape exemplifies an early phase in the painter’s patently disciplined application of colors to achieve optical effects and his highly structured approach to composition. The contrast between the horizontal band of the dirt road in the foreground and the vertical lines that define the edges of the building’s walls emphasize the discrete tonal regions that Seurat defined with small, crosshatched brushstrokes. He designed a dynamic parallel between the angled rooftop and the diverging slants in the road to add nuance to the static horizontal and vertical contrasts. Seurat’s approach ultimately contrasted with the spontaneity of Impressionist painting and prefigured an ever-widening gulf between his generation of artists and the previous one.
Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon
2019-2020: "Van Gogh Monet Degas, The Mellon Collection of French Art from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts", Palazzo Zabarella, Padua, Italy, October 26, 2019 - March 1, 2020
2019-2021: Van Gogh, Monet, Degas, and Their Times: The Mellon Collection of French Art from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Frist Art Museum, Nashville, TN, February 2 - May 5, 2019; Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson, MS, April 4, 2020 - January 10, 2021
2018-2019: "Van Gogh, Monet, Degas: The Mellon Collection of French Art from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts", The Frick Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, March 17 - July 15, 2018; Oklahoma Museum of Art, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, June 22 - September 22, 2019
2019-2021: Van Gogh, Monet, Degas, and Their Times: The Mellon Collection of French Art from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Frist Art Museum, Nashville, TN, February 2 - May 5, 2019; Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson, MS, April 4, 2020 - January 10, 2021
2018-2019: "Van Gogh, Monet, Degas: The Mellon Collection of French Art from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts", The Frick Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, March 17 - July 15, 2018; Oklahoma Museum of Art, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, June 22 - September 22, 2019
Image released via Creative Commons CC-BY-NC
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