MWW Artwork of the Day (7/13/26) Georges-Pierre Seurat (French, 1859-1891) Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (1884-86) Oil on canvas, 207.6 x 308 cm. The Art Institute of Chicago (Helen Birch Bartlett Memorial Collection)
With this picture Georges Seurat recast Impressionism, using as his guides both optical theory and idealist aesthetics. The hieratic figures, shown mostly in profile or straight-on, recall ancient Egyptian reliefs, and the deliberate compositional rhythms amount to a pointed critique of Impressionist ephemerality. As if to dispel any lingering doubts on this point, Seurat also rejected free, sketchy handling, choosing instead to render the entire scene with meticulous, dotlike touches of paint, which, viewed from a certain distance, resemble nothing so much as tapestry stitching.
