Georges Seurat
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 :. | The Circus, | Island Bowl Sunday | Impression Figure | Detail of Bather | The Circus | Related Artists: Francis Cotes(20 May 1726 - 16 July 1770) was an English painter, one of the pioneers of English pastel painting, and a founder member of the Royal Academy in 1768.
He was born in London, the eldest son of Robert Cotes, an apothecary (Francis's younger brother Samuel Cotes (1734 - 1818) also became an artist, specialising in miniatures). Cotes trained with portrait painter George Knapton (1698 - 1778) before setting up his own business in his father's business premises in London's Cork Streetelearning, incidentally, much about chemistry to inform his making of pastels.
An admirer of the pastel drawings of Rosalba Carriera, Cotes concentrated on works in pastel and crayon (some of which became well-known as engravings). After pushing crayon to its limit as a mediumealthough he was never to abandon it entirelye - otes turned to oil painting as a means of developing his style in larger-scale works. In his most successful paintings, particularly those of the early 1760s, the oil paint is thinly applied, in imitation of his pastel technique, and imbued with charm, inviting comparisons with Allan Ramsay (1713 - 1784) and Sir Joshua Reynolds. They have clarity and warmth and possess a remarkable attention to costume. In 1763, he bought a large house (later occupied by George Romney) in Cavendish Square.
One of the most fashionable portrait painters of his day, Cotes helped found the Society of Artists and became its director in 1765. At the peak of his powers, Cotes was invited to become one of the first members of the Royal Academy, but died just two years later, aged 44, in Richmond.
He also taught pastel skills to John Russell, and his skills were described in book The Elements of Painting with Crayon.
Jean Mannheim1863-1945 Theodore Henry Fielding Fielding, TH (Theodore Henry), 1781-1851
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