French painter
Georges Seurat (1859–91) is best known for inventing pointillism, a neo-Impressionist technique that involves dotting the canvas with countless tiny dots. His scenes of suburban leisure, such as Bathers at Asnières and A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, are among his most well-known pieces.
These are 2 of his best paintings.
The Channel of Gravelines, Petit Fort Philippe (1890)
When
Seurat visited Gravelines, a small port on the northern French coast halfway between Dunkirk and Calais, in the summer of 1890, he painted The Channel. The Channel at Gravelines, Grand Fort-Philippe, The Channel at Gravelines, Evening, and
The Channel at Gravelines, Toward the Sea are the other three works created by Georges Seurat in this location. Georges Seurat died the following year at the age of 31, so the paintings in this series were to be his final depictions of the ocean. The poet and critic Émile Verhaeren said of Georges Seurat's Gravelines series in 1891: "It is air and light, even and tranquil, fixed in frames."
Georges Seurat changed the positions of the boats in this particular painting to use their horizontal and vertical lines to create a balanced composition. This contributes to the calming atmosphere that is also produced by the
artist's subtle use of color and the luminosity his pointillist technique produces. Each section of the painted border complements the surrounding area, enhancing the impact of the colors.
Bec Du Hoc Grandcamp 1885
Georges Seurat scheduled his various artistic endeavors around the seasons, much like many of his contemporaries who were French painters at the time. He worked on his larger
canvases, such as Bathers at Asnières and A Sunday Afternoon on
La Grande Jatte, in the autumn, winter, and spring. The following summer, he spent time outside of the city, painting landscapes and coastal scenes. Le Bec du Hoc, Grandcamp, was created during the first of these summer excursions when Georges Seurat visited the small Normandy town of Grandcamp.
Le Bec du Hoc, a rocky outcrop on the coast that is now essentially unrecognizably painted by the artist, was the target of American and British shelling that was directed at the German positions erected on the Pointe du Hoc in the weeks leading up to and on D-Day.
Georges Seurat immediately
created an oil sketch in preparation for this composition, which he later used as a study for the finished painting, though there are some significant differences between the two. For instance, he painted the rocky shore below in the study but left it out of the finished painting. He added a painted border like the ones on many of his other paintings in 1888 and made minor changes to the canvas' surface.
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Ava Foster, a San Francisco native, is a mom, writer, certified yoga instructor, and advocate for holistic well-being, sharing her authentic and relatable journey on parenthood and mindfulness through her blog.
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