Georges Seurat Oil Paintings

Biography of Georges Seurat

Georges Seurat 1859 - 1891

During his short life, Georges-Pierre Seurat was an innovator in an age of innovators in the field of art. This french painter was a leader in a movement called neo-impressionist in the late 19th century. Unlike the broad brushstrokes of the impressionist, Seurat developed a technique called pointillism or divisonism. In this method, he used small dots or strokes of contrasting color to create the subtle changes contained within the painting. Seurat was an art scientist in that he spent much of his life, searching for how different colors and linear effects would change the look or texture of a canvas. He was painstaking in his work, the technique he chose taking much longer to produce a work of art. Even so in his life, he produced over 500 paintings or drawings.

Seurat was born in Paris on December 2, 1859, in Paris. He studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1878 and 1879. While at the institute, the young Seurat was strongly influenced by works of Rembrandt and Francisco de Goya.

A private man, Seurat after he was an established artist, would produce one large canvas a year for a total of seven monumental paintings. Along with this he produced 60 smaller paintings. He was very regimented, spending his winters in Paris and his summers on France's northern coast. In 1891, his life was cut short suddenly at the age of 31 in Paris, but even in this short time, his impact on the world of art will withstand the ages.

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