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Georges Seurat, A Sunday on La Grande Jatte — 1884, 1884–86, border added 1888–89
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Room 10

A Sunday on La Grande Jatte — 1884

Georges Seurat1884–86, border added 1888–89Oil on canvas207.5 × 308.1 cm

The story of this room

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We step out of the rehearsal room into a sunny park by a river. Leo walks right up to the canvas, then jumps back in surprise. From across the room he saw grass and parasols. Up close, it is all tiny dabs of color. Take one step back and the dots quietly turn into people again.

This canvas is about ten feet wide. On La Grande Jatte, an island in the Seine just outside Paris, people are spending a Sunday afternoon. They stroll, lounge on the grass, sail, and fish. They come in every age and from every walk of life.

Look at the lower right. At the feet of the woman holding a dark parasol, a small monkey stands on a leash. The Art Institute of Chicago, which owns the painting, explains that Seurat came back to the canvas about two years after he started it, sharpening some figures and adding new ones. The monkey on its leash was one of those additions, though it now looks as if it had always been there.

Now walk over to the water on the left. A woman in an orange-brown dress stands at the edge of the river, holding out a fishing pole. The reeds and ripples in front of her are made of short strokes and dots too. Then follow the very edge of the picture. A narrow border of red and blue dots runs around it. Seurat painted that border later, in 1888 and 1889.

Georges Seurat began the painting in 1884 and finished it in 1886. Instead of mixing colors on his palette, he set small dabs of different colors side by side. He believed the colors would blend in the viewer's eye and look brighter than paint mixed in advance. This method of building a picture from dots, guided by theories of color and light, is called Pointillism.

Before tackling this huge canvas, he made many smaller painted and drawn studies. Leo dots a few marks into his notebook and shakes his head. Placing all these one by one, with a plan for each? My wrist would give up first, he laughs. Seurat showed the painting at the last Impressionist exhibition in 1886. Five years later he died, at just thirty-one.

In the next room, the dots give way to swirling brushstrokes. A wheat field ripples in the wind, and a dark tree rises like a flame.

Reading the picture

5 places to look closer

  1. At the lower right, look near the feet of the woman with the parasol. A small monkey on a leash arches its back. In front of it a little dog with a curled tail dashes along. About two years after he began, Seurat came back to the canvas and added more figures, and this monkey was one of those additions.

  2. Zoom in on the woman standing at the water's edge on the left. She holds a long fishing rod out over the river. Behind her, the water sparkles with short strokes of blue, green and orange laid side by side. She is fishing in her full Sunday dress.

  3. Find the little girl in white near the center. Most of the people are seen from the side, but she faces us. Yet her face has no eyes, nose or mouth, only a soft blur of color. Seurat made posture and outline sharp instead of expressions.

  4. Zoom in on the far right edge. Where the grass ends, a narrow band packed with blue and red dots runs down the side. This is the border Seurat painted on in 1888 to 1889, a few years after he first showed the picture.

  5. Get very close to the shaded grass. There is no single flat green anywhere. Dots of blue, yellow, pink and pale green sit next to one another. Seurat believed that colors placed side by side, instead of mixed on the palette, would blend in the viewer's eye into a brighter color.