Study for "A Sunday on La Grande Jatte"1884
This is one of the most complete of Seurat’s preparatory studies for A Sunday on La Grande Jatte — 1884: most of the figures of the final painting are already in place, from the couple with a monkey… More about this work
About this work
This is one of the most complete of Seurat’s preparatory studies for A Sunday on La Grande Jatte — 1884: most of the figures of the final painting are already in place, from the couple with a monkey on a leash to the dog in the foreground and the strollers and boaters along the river. Seurat painted it in 1884 to fix the composition before beginning the huge canvas now in Chicago. The handling is freer than in the finished work, so it lets us see the scene as it was taking shape.
Written by Ochre Editions.
How it was made
- Oil paint
- Pigment ground in a drying oil, usually linseed. It dries slowly, so painters could blend on the canvas, build up thin translucent glazes, and rework a picture over weeks. Canvas replaced wooden panels in the 1500s because it is lighter and can be rolled.
Georges Seurat
French, 1859–1891 · Born and died in Paris.
Seurat trained at the École des Beaux-Arts and studied the colour theories of Chevreul and others before developing pointillism, building pictures from small, separate touches of pure colour meant to combine in the eye. His large compositions, planned through many drawings and oil sketches, include Bathers at Asnières and A Sunday on La Grande Jatte — 1884, shown at the last Impressionist exhibition in 1886. His black conté crayon drawings are equally distinctive. He died suddenly at thirty-one.
Written by Ochre Editions.
Post-Impressionism
Artists who kept Impressionism's colour but pushed towards structure, symbol and feeling.
Rights and the museum’s record
Public domain. The Met has dedicated this image to the public domain under CC0, so anyone may copy, adapt and use it, for any purpose, without asking. Our prints and files are reproductions made from the museum’s image; the museum doesn’t endorse them.
- Object number
- 51.112.6
- Credit
- Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art
- Type
- Paintings
- Department
- European Paintings
- Licence
- CC0 1.0 Universal
- Museum record
- See it on the museum’s site
