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Masters of Art: Seurat

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Impressionist and post-Impressionist authority Pierre Courthion says that first tries often show the full range of an artist's talent: "Man at a parapet," aka "The invalid," painted harmonious curves, modulated planes, and straight lines; and "Head of a girl" brushstroked dark against light with the turned away face of an Italian painting and without contour lines. In fact, GEORGES SEURAT became the first painter to draw boundaries as spreading surfaces in lighted areas and as silhouettes in shaded areas. He went on to paint Impressionist-style themes of bourgeois city and countryside life, cafe and circus scenes, seashores and summer landscapes with dots blending into shimmering light and subtle color variations at a distance. The book's 40 colorplates, along with John Russell's SEURAT, show the most important of his 700 drawings and 200 paintings: the blue of "Bathing at Asnieres" and the immense scale of "Bec du hoc" from Bruegel the Elder; the dancing diagonals and slanting double bass of "Le chahut"; "The circus" clown, horse and lady rider galloping and jumping before a captivated audience in a composition of ellipses, ovals and trapezoids worthy of Raphael's "Transfiguration"; the frontal sunset of "Evening, Honfleur" hallmarking a great artist; the ancestors of abstract art in "Port-en-Bessin" and "Rue Saint-Vincent"; the differently brushstroked beach, cliff, mist, sea, ships and vegetation of "Shore at Bas-Butin"; and the David-Pierre Humbert de Superville-styled plumbline straight figures among sultry summer lights and shadows of the masterpiece "A Sunday afternoon on the island of La Grande Jatte". Readers can put pointillist art in context with Bernard Denvir's POST-IMPRESSIONISM, Walter S. Gibson's BRUEGEL and Wolfgang Stechow's PIETER BRUEGEL THE ELDER.