Georges Seurat was a French painter who developed the style of pointillism in the late 19th century. Pointillism involves applying small dots or points of pure color close together so that from a distance they blend together in the eye of the viewer to form a unified image. Seurat's most famous painting using this technique was Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte from 1886, which took him two years to complete and contains over 3 million dots of paint. Although he died young at age 32, Seurat had a significant influence on later artists such as Van Gogh, Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Matisse.

1. Georges Seurat
Pointillism
* Portrait of Seurat by Maximillian Luce

2. Georges Seurat was born in France
in 1859.
He created a new style of painting
called “Pointillism.”
Pointillism is painting with little dots and dashes
of color.
If you look at Seurat’s paintings closely, all you
see are dots, but when you move away from the
painting, your eyes form the dots into a picture.

3. What is Pointillism?
Pointillism is a technique of painting in
which a lot of tiny dots are combined to
form a picture.
‘Eiffel Tower’
Close up view of ‘Eiffel Tower’

4. The Circus, 1891 by Seurat.
This is a close up of the rider’s leg.

5. An even closer view!

6. “Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte”, 1886
This painting covers a wall, has 3,456,000 dots, and took two years to paint!

7. Seurat died of a sudden illness when he was
only 32 years old.
Although he lived only a short time, he created
a
remarkable art style. He influenced many other
artists of the time including Vincent van Gogh,
Paul Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec and
Matisse.
* Vincent van Gogh - The Starry Night - 1889
* Henri Matisse – Luxe calme et volupté - 1905