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 :. | Model | Walk with the Monkey | Etude pour Moyenne Distance,gauche,avec Bateau a Voile | The Countrywoman sat on the Lawn | Bathers at Asnieres |
Related Artists:
HONTHORST, Gerrit van
Dutch Baroque Era Painter, ca.1590-1656 Dutch portrait, genre, and allegorical painter. In Italy (c.1610?C1620) he gained a sound understanding of the works of Caravaggio, which greatly affected his style. He was a master at painting candlelit genre pieces and biblical scenes. Upon his return to Holland, he introduced the Italian manner of illusionistic decoration into Dutch interiors, as in his decorative scheme for the palace of Honselaarsdijk. In 1628, Charles I invited him to England, where he decorated Whitehall and painted portraits of the king and nobility. Several of these are now in the National Gallery, London. He also worked for the court of Denmark, and from 1637 to 1652 at The Hague. Together with Terbrugghen and Baburen he led the influential Utrecht school of painting that introduced Caravaggesque dramatic realism into Dutch art.
charles de brosses
(1709-77). President of the Parlement de Dijon, friend of the philosophes, and in Diderot's words ??une petite t??te gaie, ironique et satiriquee. His learned publications include important work on the origins of language (Traite de la formation m??canique des langues, 1765) and on primitive religion (Du culte des dieux fetiches, 1760). His Lettres familieres crites d Italie en 1739 et 1740, published posthumously in 1799 and much loved by Stendhal, offer a model of personal travel writing, in which detailed accounts of art works and monuments, not always complimentary, or a careful description of Vesuvius, addressed to Buffon, are interspersed with sprightly, enthusiastic accounts of the peculiarities and the aesthetic and sensual pleasures of life in Italy.
Giovanni Migliara
Italian 1785-1837 He began his career as a scene painter with Gaspare Galiari (1761-1823) in Milan, working at the Teatro Carcano in 1804 and at La Scala from 1805 to 1809. Owing to illness, after 1810 he turned to small-scale works in watercolour or oil using various supports, including silk and ivory. At this date Milanese painting was dominated by Andrea Appiani and Luigi Sabatelli, both leading Neo-classical artists. However, Migliara remained aloof from this dominant movement and instead drew on medieval and historical subjects with Romantic undertones. His precise, jewel-like technique and choice of subject-matter found favour with aristocratic patrons in Milan. His figures are generally stilted and burdened by their costumes, though the crowd in Sacking of Minister Prina's House (1814; Milan, Gal. A. Mod.) is depicted with unusual fluency. In 1822 Migliara was appointed Professor of Perspective at the Accademia di Belle Arti, Milan, and in 1833 he was nominated painter to the court of Charles-Albert, King of Sardinia (reg 1831-49). More typical of his historical scenes is Entrance to the Castle of Plessis de la Tour (Turin, Gal. Civ. A. Mod.), which was exhibited at the Brera in 1833. He also produced many topographically precise pictures of church interiors in which he combined his training as a scene painter with his knowledge of intaglio techniques.