Painting: Study for A Sunday on La Grande Jatte
Artist: Georges Seurat
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Size: 27.25×41″
Year: 1884
Georges Seurat made a name for himself when he exhibited a particularly large painting, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of Grande Jatte (Art Institute of Chicago), in the eighth and last Impressionist exhibition. The artist was fascinated by the possibilities of color. He believed, for example, that a viewer’s eye would combine small juxtaposed touches of color to create a particularly scintillating effect. This detail of a couple walking a pet monkey comes from the right side of the Museum’s picture, which is a study for the final canvas.