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 :. | Port-en-Bessin | The Harness Carriage | Bathers of Asnieres | Bathers at Asnieres (mk09) | The Reflux of Port en bessin |
Related Artists:
Georges Rouget
Georges Rouget (1781, Paris - 1869, Paris) was a neoclassical French painter. After studying in the ? - ole des beaux-arts, Rouget entered David's studio in 1797 and rapidly became his favourite student. Rouget began his professional career as his master's main assistant until David's exile to Brussels, collaborating with him on the canvases Bonaparte at the Grand-Saint-Bernard, The Coronation of Napoleon (of which he made a copy signed by David), Leonidas at Thermopylae and on one of the three copies of the Portrait of Pope Pius VII. Though winning the second prize in the prix de Rome contest in 1803, he failed three times to win the first prize. He produced many canvases for the First French Empire and the Bonapartes, such as The Marriage of Napoleon and Marie Louise in 1811. A minor painter, he spent his whole career producing paintings of great moments in French history for whatever regime was in power at the time. Many of his paintings adorned the musee de Versailles opened by Louis-Philippe in 1837.
Herbert James Draper
(1863 - 22 September 1920) was an English Classicist painter whose career began in the Victorian era and extended through the first two decades of the 20th century. Born in London, the son of a jeweller named Henry Draper and his wife Emma,he was educated at Bruce Castle school in Tottenham and then went on to study art at the Royal Academy. He undertook several educational trips to Rome and Paris between 1888 and 1892, having won the Royal Academy Gold Medal and Travelling Studentship in 1889. In the 1890s he worked also as an illustrator, settling in London. In 1891 he married his wife Ida , with whom he had a daughter, Yvonne.He died of arteriosclerosis at his home at 15, Abbey Road, N.W.8 on 22 September 1920
Konstantinos Volanakis
(Greek, b. Heraklion, Crete, 1837- d. 29 June 1907) was a Greek painter, considered one of the best of the 19th century. Born to a wealthy family, he went to Trieste, Italy, in 1856 where he took up painting. He studied in the Munich Academy. He is one of the foremost representatives of the Munich School, a Greek artistic movement of the 19th century. Michalis Oikonomou, another Greek painter, was one of his pupils. He died in 1907. His works are today exhibited in major museums in Greece and abroad.