Neo-Impressionism · 1884-1886
A Sunday on La Grande Jatte
Parisians gather beside the Seine, but no one quite touches. Seurat built a modern crowd from countless small marks and strict geometry.
- Made
- 1884-1886
- Style
- Neo-Impressionism
- Collection
- Art Institute of Chicago
From museum to game table
The in-game crop
The card adds paint spaces, rewards and a frame. This crop shows the artwork area used during play, without the card rails.
The short history
What happened here?
Seurat worked on the ten-foot-wide canvas for about two years. He made many drawings and painted studies on the island before assembling the final scene in his studio.
Small touches of contrasting color mix in the viewer's eye. The method became known as Pointillism, though Seurat preferred language that stressed color division and optical theory.
The painting appeared at the final Impressionist exhibition in 1886 and pointed toward Neo-Impressionism. Its people are modern and fashionable, yet their stillness makes the sunny park feel formal and strange.
Look closer
Three details worth finding
- 1The monkey on a lead at lower right
- 2A painted border that repeats the scene's colors
- 3Sails and umbrellas built from simple triangles
Sources
Read further
Museum records come first. Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons provide useful public background and image records.