27 Facts About Georges Seurat

Georges Pierre Seurat was a French post-Impressionist artist.

Georges Seurat devised the painting techniques known as chromoluminarism and pointillism and used conte crayon for drawings on paper with a rough surface.

Georges Seurat was born on 2 December 1859 in Paris, at 60 rue de Bondy.

The Georges Seurat family moved to 136 boulevard de Magenta in 1862 or 1863.

Georges Seurat's father, Antoine Chrysostome Seurat, originally from Champagne, was a former legal official who had become wealthy from speculating in property, and his mother, Ernestine Faivre, was from Paris.

Georges Seurat's father lived in Le Raincy and visited his wife and children once a week at boulevard de Magenta.

Georges Seurat first studied art at the Ecole Municipale de Sculpture et Dessin, near his family's home in the boulevard Magenta, which was run by the sculptor Justin Lequien.

Georges Seurat's studies resulted in a well-considered and fertile theory of contrasts: a theory to which all his work was thereafter subjected.

Georges Seurat's first exhibited work, shown at the Salon, of 1883, was a Conte crayon drawing of Aman-Jean.

Georges Seurat studied the works of Eugene Delacroix carefully, making notes on his use of color.

Georges Seurat departed from the Impressionist ideal by preparing for the work with a number of drawings and oil sketches before starting on the canvas in his studio.

In summer 1884, Georges Seurat began work on A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.

Georges Seurat concealed his relationship with Madeleine Knobloch, an artist's model whom he portrayed in his painting Jeune femme se poudrant.

Georges Seurat spent the summer of 1890 on the coast at Gravelines, where he painted four canvases including The Channel of Gravelines, Petit Fort Philippe, as well as eight oil panels, and made a few drawings.

Georges Seurat died in Paris in his parents' home on 29 March 1891 at the age of 31.

Georges Seurat's son died two weeks later from the same disease.

Georges Seurat was interred 31 March 1891 at Cimetiere du Pere-Lachaise.

Georges Seurat said that colour should not be based on the "judgment of taste", but rather it should be close to what we experience in reality.

Georges Seurat analyzed the effects of mixing and juxtaposing material pigments.

Georges Seurat pointed out that the juxtaposition of primary hues next to each other would create a far more intense and pleasing colour, when perceived by the eye and mind, than the corresponding color made simply by mixing paint.

Georges Seurat was influenced by Sutter's Phenomena of Vision, in which he wrote that "the laws of harmony can be learned as one learns the laws of harmony and music".

Georges Seurat heard lectures in the 1880s by the mathematician Charles Henry at the Sorbonne, who discussed the emotional properties and symbolic meaning of lines and colour.

Georges Seurat took to heart the colour theorists' notion of a scientific approach to painting.

Georges Seurat believed that a painter could use colour to create harmony and emotion in art in the same way that a musician uses counterpoint and variation to create harmony in music.

Georges Seurat theorized that the scientific application of colour was like any other natural law, and he was driven to prove this conjecture.

Georges Seurat thought that the knowledge of perception and optical laws could be used to create a new language of art based on its own set of heuristics and he set out to show this language using lines, colour intensity and colour schema.

From 1883 until his death, Georges Seurat exhibited his work at the Salon, the Salon des Independants, Les XX in Brussels, the eighth Impressionist exhibition, and other exhibitions in France and abroad.