Georges Seurat, 'Study for 'La Grande Jatte'', 1884-5
About the work
Overview
Seurat produced many oil sketches and drawings as studies for his monumental painting A Sunday on La Grande Jatte of 1884–6 (Art Institute of Chicago). Many of these concentrate on the landscape but others, including this one, focus on the scale and position of figures within the final picture.
Here we see a man standing rigidly, reduced to his essential outline with no incidental detail. Seurat had already included him in an earlier oil sketch, and he appears in the final painting where he is accompanied by an elegantly dressed woman. Like most of the people in the Grande Jatte, he is shown in profile as he looks straight ahead at the river. He wears a black top hat, a long grey jacket or coat and dark trousers, which identify him as a member of the middle or upper classes and, perhaps, as a dandy. He also holds what might be a walking cane or a furled umbrella and what may be a folded blanket or groundsheet.
Key facts
Details
- Full title
- Study for 'La Grande Jatte'
- Artist
- Georges Seurat
- Artist dates
- 1859 - 1891
- Date made
- 1884-5
- Medium and support
- oil on wood
- Dimensions
- 17.5 × 26 cm
- Acquisition credit
- Presented by Heinz Berggruen, 1995
- Inventory number
- NG6560
- Location
- Not on display
- Collection
- Main Collection
Provenance
Additional information
Text extracted from the National Gallery’s Annual Report, ‘The National Gallery Report: April 1995 – March 1996’ and supplemented by Isobel Muir.
Exhibition history
-
2009Georges Seurat: Figure in SpaceKunsthaus Zürich2 October 2009 - 17 January 2010Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt4 February 2010 - 9 May 2010
-
2016Seurat, Signac, Van Gogh Ways of PointillismAlbertina15 September 2016 - 8 January 2017
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2023Van Gogh and the Avant-Garde: The Modern LandscapeThe Art Institute of Chicago14 May 2023 - 4 September 2023Van Gogh Museum13 October 2023 - 14 January 2024
Bibliography
-
1931R. Flint, 'Private Collection of Josef Stransky', Art News, 1931, pp. 87-116
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1935D.C. Rich, Seurat and the Evolution of La Grande Jatte, Chicago 1935
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1959H. Dorra and J. Rewald, Seurat: L'oeuvre peint; biographie et catalogue critique, Paris 1959
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1961C. de Hauke, Seurat et son oeuvre, Paris 1961
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1991M.F. Zimmermann, Seurat and the Art Theory of His Time, Antwerp 1991
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1994O. Berggruen, Van Gogh to Picasso: The Berggruen Collection at the National Gallery, Supplement, London 1994
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1996National Gallery, The National Gallery Report: April 1995- March 1996, London 1996
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1997J. Leighton and R. Thomson, Seurat and the Bathers, (exh. cat. The National Gallery, 2 July - 28 September 1997), London 1997
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2001
C. Baker and T. Henry, The National Gallery: Complete Illustrated Catalogue, London 2001
About this record
If you know more about this painting or have spotted an error, please contact us. Please note that exhibition histories are listed from 2009 onwards. Bibliographies may not be complete; more comprehensive information is available in the National Gallery Library.