Common Core State Standard: ELA: Literacy: R.L. 3.3-5.3, R.L. 3.7-6.7, R.L. 3.1-5.1, R.L. 6.4-8.4, R.H.

6-8.4, R.H. 6-8.7

Meet the Artist: Georges Seurat

Written by the Staff at Lyman Allyn Art Museum
Can you imagine making a painting entirely out of small dots of paint?
Seurat is best known for his work with a painting technique called Poin-
tillism, in which small dots of color are combined to create a picture. •Seurat was born on December
Seurat was also very interested in the science of optics and color. He 2, 1859 in Paris, France; he died
found that if he applied a red dot of paint and a blue dot of paint next in 1891
to one another, the human eye could “mix” these colors to see purple
on the canvas. In the detail below, can you see the individual dots of •He lived and worked in France
color that form a person? Seurat’s most famous painting took him two
years to complete and shows his incredible use of Pointillism. A Sunday •Style: Post-Impressionism,
Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte is a huge work of art, more Pointillism, Neo-Impressionism
than 6ft tall and 10 feet wide. It shows a park outside the city of Paris,
where people took part in leisure activities like boating, swimming,
walking, and picnicking. To get ideas for his painting, Seurat visited
the parked on a weekly basis and made more than 60 sketches of the
people he observed. There are also several animals in the painting: can
you find the monkey?

a t i v e
t C r e
Ge Art Break!
Supplies needed: paper & colored
pencils
Create your own Pointillist work of
art! Can you make a person entire-
ly out of colored dots? Think about
how to “mix” colors Seurat-style.

A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.1884-86.

Collection of the Art Institute of Chicago.