Georges Seurat

Georges Seurat was born in 1859 into a wealthy Paris family. In 1878 he entered the École des Beaux-Arts, where he studied the paintings of the old masters and the study of contrast. After military service, in 1883 he began his first large work, Bathers at Asnières, and completed it the next year, 1884.

Seurat took the broken-color technique used by the Impressionists further, brought in optical theory, and arrived at pointillism, in which small dots of color are placed side by side. Before finishing a work he made many drawings and studies, and he left many oil sketches on panels about 16 cm high by 25 cm wide.

A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, which he began in 1884, was shown at the last Impressionist exhibition in 1886 and caused a stir. It was in a review of this work that a critic first used the name "Neo-Impressionism." Seurat died in 1891 at the age of 31, and only about six large works survive.