Today’s Doodle honours French painter Georges Seurat, who used his hallmark painting styles of Pointillism and Divisionism to highlight the natural aspects of light in scenes of contemporary Parisian life. Seurat’s avant-garde approaches spawned Neo-Impressionism, a 19th-century avant-garde movement that irrevocably altered the trajectory of modern art.
On this day in 1859, Georges Seurat was born into a wealthy family in Paris, France. As a youth, he began formal artistic study and continued his education at the famed École des Beaux-Arts in 1878. During his studies, Seurat grew fascinated in the science behind art, but he soon became disillusioned with the confines of academic tradition. He studied colour theory and optical optics in order to create an innovative style he called “chromo-luminarism,” which was eventually known as Pointillism or Divisionism.
At the age of 26, Seurat completed “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte — 1884,” widely considered his masterpiece, after many draughts on small boards, a meeting with a 100-year-old chemist, and years of experimentation. It is now in the Helen Birch Bartlett Memorial Collection, The Art Institute of Chicago. In the Doodle artwork, an encapsulation of the Pointillist technique is recreated. The mural-sized artwork deceives the observer into perceiving over 200,000 tiny brushstrokes and dabs of contrasting colour on its canvas as a shimmering, unified vision of an island in the Seine outside of Paris when viewed from the right distance.
Some art historians believe that Seurat’s concern with colour theory was motivated by the atmospheric effects of the volcanic eruptions that produced some of the most brilliant sunsets ever recorded throughout the 1800s. Seurat’s artistic breakthroughs have had an impact on visual culture, despite the fact that the exact inspirations for his artistic advances are unknown. His enormous work has influenced innumerable artists from other fields, as well as a Broadway musical and a blockbuster film.
Here’s to an artist who never failed to see the big picture!