Seurat and Pointillism Learning Objective: To find out who Georges Seurat was and to explore his style of art. www.planbee.com This man is called Georges Seurat. Over the next few lessons we are going to be finding out more about this famous artist and his style of art. What can you tell about this man from the photograph? www.planbee.com Georges Seurat was a French artist. He was born on 2nd December 1859 in Paris. His family was very rich. When he was a young man, he went to L’Ecole des Beaux Arts (the School of Fine Arts) where he developed his passion and talent for art. In France at that time, an art movement called Impressionism was Have a look at in full flow. Artists like Monet and the Renoir wanted to capture a fleeting Impressionist moment in time with their paintings. paintings on the They mostly painted outside and next slide. What wanted to capture the light. For this do you think of reason, they had to paint what they them? How saw quickly. When Impressionism would you was new, people thought that they describe this weren’t proper paintings and that style of art? they were just ‘impressions’. www.planbee.com This painting is called ‘Sunset on the Seine’ and is by Claude Monet. www.planbee.com This painting is called ‘Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette’ and is by Pierre- Auguste Renoir. www.planbee.com Impressionism became a very popular art movement. However, Seurat developed his own style of painting which was very different to the quick, light brushstrokes of Impressionism. This is one of Seurat’s paintings. What method do you think he has used to paint this picture? www.planbee.com Seurat developed a style of painting which he called Divisionism but which is now known as Pointillism. Impressionists had used dabs of colour to create their pictures but Seurat took this a step further and used dots of pure colour to create his paintings. As you step away from the paintings, the dots merge to create images, shading and colours that are often described as being luminous and shimmery. www.planbee.com Because Seurat’s work was a new type of Impressionism, an art critic called Félix Fénéon used the term ‘Neo- Impressionism’ (meaning ‘new Impressionism’) to describe Seurat’s paintings. Seurat had started a new art movement. Let’s have a look at some more of Seurat’s Pointillist paintings. As we look through, talk about what you can see, what you think of them and how they are different to the paintings that other artists in France at the time were creating. www.planbee.com This painting is called ‘The Maria at Honfleur’. It was painted in 1886. www.planbee.com This painting is called ‘Port-au- Bessin, the Outer Harbour’. It was painted in 1888. www.planbee.com This painting is called ‘The Circus’. It was painted in 1890. www.planbee.com This painting is called ‘A Sunday on the Grande Jatte’. It was painted between 1884 and 1886 and is Seurat’s most famous painting. www.planbee.com.