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 :. | Le Chahut | Model Form Behind | Weibes und schwarzes Pferd im Flub | bathers as asnieres | Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte |
Related Artists:
Blarenberghe
was the name of a dynasty of painters, originally from French Flanders but the most famous descendants lived in Lille and Paris in France. They were all descendants from Joris van Blarenberghe (1612-1670). The first two painters were Hendrick van Blarenberghe (1646-1712) and his son Jacques-Guillaume van Blarenberghe (1679-1742). Their style was still heavily influenced by the Flemish Baroque style. Jacques-Guillaume had two painting sons, Louis-Nicolas Van Blarenberghe (15 July 1716 - 1 May 1794) and Henri Desire van Blarenberghe (1734-1812). Louis-Nicolas had a son who was also a painter and with who he often collaborated: Henri-Joseph van Blarenberghe (24 November 1750 - 1 December 1826). Together with his father, they stayed at the Palace of Versailles, where they worked as miniaturists for the high society of their day. They were especially famous for their paintings on snuff boxes. Louis-Nicolas also worked as official campaign painter of the French court, following the French army as a war reporter. Two of his daughters, Catherine-Henriette and Isabelle, were chamber maids to the children of the French kings. The works of Louis-Nicolas and Henri-Joseph were collected in profusion in the 19th century by the Rothschild family. There is a collection of their work on public display at Waddesdon Manor. Henri-Joseph painted, besides the miniatures, mainly Panoramic paintings, often in gouache. The subjects were, as with his father, often military, and also included the French revolution.
Worth Brehm
American, 1883-1928
Auguste Bouvier
1825-1881