The Development of Pointillism

During his short lifetime, Seurat had a great influence on the development of Pointillism. Pointillism, which Seurat called “chromo-luminarism” and Seurat’s disciple Paul Signac called “Divisionism”, was the style in which small dots, or points, of complimentary color were used to intensify color and light.

Bathers, Seurat’s first major work, contains only hints of the Pointillism that would later become Seurat’s trademark. The use of adjacent complimentary colors, such as the blue water on the orange bathing suit, applied the scientific principle that was the foundation for Pointillism. Seurat uses some dots and tiny brushstrokes of color in Bathers, for example in the boy’s hat and in the grass. However these dots are placed sparingly within a block of color, and not placed tightly together as Seurat would do in his later paintings.

Grande Jatte was Seurat’s first Pointillist work. It is clear that Seurat was developing his Pointillist style, for the brushwork varies greatly within the painting: Seurat uses tiny dots of red green and white to depict the grass, small brown, green, and white vertical lines to depict the tree bark, and slightly larger brushstrokes paint the clothes and flesh of the characters in the foreground. Before exhibiting the painting, Seurat also touched up the painting with a pointillist border, which consists of fine dots of complimentary color to the color the border touches at a certain point (e.g. the border is red where it touches green, and is blue where it touches orange, etc). Grand Jatte is Seurat's first Pointillist work, however he continued to develop the style after the painting's completion.

Though not nearly as well known as Grande Jatte, Seurat’s Bridge at Courbevoie (1886-7, London, Courtald Institude) is considered by many to be a better example of Pointillism in its purest form. Though it is no grandiose painting, Bridge at Courbevoie uses dots of complimentary color, mostly yellowish greens and violets, to stir emotion in the viewer and to depict nature (the hazy mist and the leafy trees) in a subtle manner. (Leighton, 138) This exceptional ability of Pointillism to convey mood purely through style was what intrigued many of Seurat’s followers such as Signac, Charles Angrand, and Henri Edmond Cross. Seurat’s followers, like Seurat, found that this style was good at capturing the subtleties of waterfronts and ocean scenes.