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Colour pioneer
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Georges Pierre Seurat was the first to use scientific principles of colour mixing
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LEADING BY EXAMPLE Seurat's The Lighthouse at Honfleur
Born on December 2, 1859 in Paris, Georges Pierre Seurat was the son of well-to-do parents. His father, Antoine, a legal official, was a taciturn man who visited his family only on Tuesdays. Seurat seems to have inherited his father's reclusive nature and while he was warm in one-to-one interactions, was very withdrawn in a group. Seurat was introduced to art by his uncle, a textile designer. In 1875, he attended drawing classes at a night school. He met fellow artist Edmond Aman-Jean there. In 1878, he was admitted to Ecole des Beaux Arts, the official art school. A year later, Seurat left school and rented a studio with Aman-Jean. The same year he went for the fourth impressionist exhibition and saw a style of painting liberated from the academic rules. He went into military service for a year at the port of Brest.
He exhibited at the Salon for the first and only time in 1883. The next year, the Salon rejected his first large painting, Bathers at Asnieres. The painting was however exhibited at the show organised by Societe Des Artistes Independants. He then began work on A Sunday on La Grande Jatte using the scientific principles of colour mixing which would give birth to the movement variously called neo-impressionism, divisionism or pointillism.
When the painting was exhibited at the eighth and final impressionist exhibition, opinion was divided and it was left to a young critic, Felix Feneon, to champion the cause of the new art form. Seurat had a regular income and so never had to paint to sell. In 1889 he met and fell in love with Madeline Knobloch, an uneducated woman from a humble background. He withdrew from public life and lived with Madeline in his studio. In February 1890, Madeline gave birth to his son in the studio. Though he gave the child his name, Seurat did not tell his mother about his family till two days before his death.
Seurat died suddenly of meningitis in March 1891 and his son also died soon after, of the same illness.
MINI ANTHIKAD-CHHIBBER
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