French Pointillist Painter, 1859-1891 Georges-Pierre Seurat (2 December 1859 ?C 29 March 1891) was a French painter and draftsman. His large work Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, his most famous painting, altered the direction of modern art by initiating Neo-impressionism, and is one of the icons of 19th century painting Seurat took to heart the color theorists' notion of a scientific approach to painting. Seurat believed that a painter could use color to create harmony and emotion in art in the same way that a musician uses counterpoint and variation to create harmony in music. Seurat theorized that the scientific application of color was like any other natural law, and he was driven to prove this conjecture. He 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, color intensity and color schema. Seurat called this language Chromoluminarism. His letter to Maurice Beaubourg in 1890 captures his feelings about the scientific approach to emotion and harmony. He says "Art is Harmony. Harmony is the analogy of the contrary and of similar elements of tone, of color and of line, considered according to their dominance and under the influence of light, in gay, calm or sad combinations". Seurat's theories can be summarized as follows: The emotion of gaiety can be achieved by the domination of luminous hues, by the predominance of warm colors, and by the use of lines directed upward. Calm is achieved through an equivalence/balance of the use of the light and the dark, by the balance of warm and cold colors, and by lines that are horizontal. Sadness is achieved by using dark and cold colors and by lines pointing downwards.  Related Paintings of Georges Seurat :. | Le Pecheur | Bather | Sunday Afternoon on the island of the Grande Jatte (nn03) | Impression Figure | Excavation Worker |
Related Artists:
Eugene Fichel
(30 August 1826 Paris - 2 February 1895 Paris) was a French painter. He entered the École des Beaux-Arts in 1844 and became a pupil of Hippolyte Delaroche, but painted very much more under the inspiration of Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier, whose exquisite handling is suggested in numerous small canvases of his which by their refined technique and vivid action recall the characteristic intensity and directness of composition which belong to the painter of eFriedland.e Along with great care in finish, Fichel's canvases also exhibit an archæological exactness, and a kind of delicate humor. His first work of importance was exhibited in 1850, eHarvey Demonstrating the Circulation of the Blood to Charles I.e He was a chevalier of the Legion of Honor and, in 1857, received a medal for his painting in the Salon of that year. He exhibited a canvas every year at the Salon, up to a few years before his death.
Peter Baumgartner
German,1834-1911
MASSYS, Jan
Netherlandish Painter, ca.1509-1575 Painter, son of Quinten Metsys. More so than his brother Cornelis Massys, who was a less talented artist, Jan worked in the style of his father, whose studio he may have taken over following his death in 1530. Two years later, though still under the age of majority, Jan was admitted as a master in the Guild of St Luke in Antwerp. Like Cornelis, he seems to have left Antwerp immediately after attaining the status of master, for he is not mentioned again in the archives. It has been suggested on stylistic grounds that he worked for a period at Fontainebleau, but this is disputed. He was, in any case, back in Antwerp by 1536, when he took on an apprentice, Frans van Tuylt. In 1538 he married Anna van Tuylt, by whom he had three children.