French Pointillist Painter, 1859-1891 Georges-Pierre Seurat (2 December 1859 ?C 29 March 1891) was a French painter and draftsman. His large work Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, his most famous painting, altered the direction of modern art by initiating Neo-impressionism, and is one of the icons of 19th century painting Seurat took to heart the color theorists' notion of a scientific approach to painting. Seurat believed that a painter could use color to create harmony and emotion in art in the same way that a musician uses counterpoint and variation to create harmony in music. Seurat theorized that the scientific application of color was like any other natural law, and he was driven to prove this conjecture. He thought that the knowledge of perception and optical laws could be used to create a new language of art based on its own set of heuristics and he set out to show this language using lines, color intensity and color schema. Seurat called this language Chromoluminarism. His letter to Maurice Beaubourg in 1890 captures his feelings about the scientific approach to emotion and harmony. He says "Art is Harmony. Harmony is the analogy of the contrary and of similar elements of tone, of color and of line, considered according to their dominance and under the influence of light, in gay, calm or sad combinations". Seurat's theories can be summarized as follows: The emotion of gaiety can be achieved by the domination of luminous hues, by the predominance of warm colors, and by the use of lines directed upward. Calm is achieved through an equivalence/balance of the use of the light and the dark, by the balance of warm and cold colors, and by lines that are horizontal. Sadness is achieved by using dark and cold colors and by lines pointing downwards.  Related Paintings of Georges Seurat :. | Detail of Bather | a sunday on la grande jatte 1884 | Fisherman | Model | Angler |
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Hennessy, William John
English, 19th Century.was an Irish artist. William John Hennessy was born in Thomastown, County Kilkenny in 1839. His father, John Hennessy, was forced to leave Ireland in 1848 as a result of his involvement in the Young Ireland movement. He landed in Canada and settled in New York. William, his mother Catherine, and brother joined their father there in 1849. He gained admittance to the National Academy of Design in 1854 and exhibitioned his first works there. Hennessy developed a skill in wood engraving and was hired to illustrate the works of renowned poets, including that of Tennyson, Longfellow and Whittier. As an American he became the co-founder of the Artists?? Fund Society, and an honorary member of the American Society of Painters in Watercolours. In 1870 he moved to London where he became a member of the Royal Institute of Oil Painters in 1902.