Georges Seurat

Portrait of Georges Seurat in 1888 (Photo by Unknown)
Portrait of Georges Seurat in 1888
Portrait of Georges Seurat in 1888, Georges Seurat, General (Photo by Unknown)
A Sunday on La Grande Jatte (1884) by Georges Seraut, in the Art Institute of Chicago, Georges Seurat, General (Photo courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago)
La Seine à la Grande-Jatte (1888) by Georges Seraut, in the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels, Georges Seurat, General (Photo courtesy of the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium)
Les Poseuses (1887–88) by Georges Seraut, in the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, Georges Seurat, General (Photo courtesy of the Barnes Foundation)
Le Cirque (1891) by Georges Seraut, in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris, Georges Seurat, General (Photo courtesy of the Musée d
Gray weather, Grande Jatte (1888) by Georges Seraut, in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Georges Seurat, General (Photo courtesy of the Philadelphia Museum of Art)
Le Chahut (The Can-Can) (1889–90) by Georges Seraut, in the Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, The Netherlands, Georges Seurat, General (Photo courtesy of the Kröller-Müller Museum)

The post-Impressionist famous for making tiny dots meld into an image

Seurat (1859-91)—along with Camille Pissaro and Paul Signac (1863-1935)—developed divisionism and its more formal cousin pointillism.

Rather than mixing, say, yellow and blue paint together to make green, they applied tiny dots of yellow and blue right next to each other so that the viewer's eye mixes them together to make green (TV sets and billboards use the same technique).

If you get up really, really close to one of these paintings (as the Cameron character does in Ferris Bueller's Day Off), all you see are tiny, individual dots of color.

(When I was a kid, I used to refer to this painter as "Sirot the Dot." What can I say. My parents too me to a lot of museums.)

Selected works by Georges Seurat in England


Bridge of Courbevoie (1886–87) by Georges Seurat in the Courtauld Gallery, London

Une baignade à Asnières (1884–87) by Georges Seurat in the National Gallery, London

Where to find works by Georges Seurat in England