Grandcamp, Evening by Georges Seurat

Where? Floor 5, Gallery 1 of the Museum of Modern Art
When? 1885
What do you see? The arrival of the evening in Grandcamp on the Northwest coast of France. The sky is a beautiful combination of white, silver, and gray. On the right is the Atlantic Ocean with a single sailboat.

Seurat painted the sea and the sky using small horizontal brush strokes to indicate the direction in which the sea and sky are moving. In contrast, he painted the using dots of paint, which you can see very clearly when standing close to the painting. Some of the objects are very unclear from up-close. For example, look at the sailboat on the sea. However, from a distance, all the dots and small brush strokes come together, and the different elements of the painting become very clear. From a distance, we have no problem identifying a sailboat in this painting.

Backstory: In 1885, Seurat spent his Summer in Grandcamp, Normandy, on the French coast. That Summer he painted several seascapes. Two examples of other works he created in Grandcamp that Summer are Ruins at Grandcamp in the Musée d’Orsay and Le Bec du Hoc, Grandcamp in Tate Modern.

Ruins of Grandcamp by Seurat

Le Bec du Hoc by Seurat

Beyond Impressionism: Impressionism developed under the lead of Édouard Manet in the 1860s, and by the 1880s, Impressionism gained quite some popularity. However, among the next generation of artists, there were several innovative painters that went beyond Impressionism, usually labeled under the umbrella term Post-Impressionism.

• Seurat developed Neo-Impressionism, which is discussed below.
• Van Gogh used brighter colors and expressed his emotions in his paintings.
• Toulouse-Lautrec was a brilliant observer and drawer and started to develop advertisement posters.
  
• Gauguin developed Primitivism and Synthetism by focusing on the purity of colors and forms.
• Cézanne changed the way in which color was applied to the painting to create shapes and depth.
  

​Together, these artists have laid the groundwork for Modern Art as developed during the 20th century.

What is Neo-Impressionism? An art movement created by Georges Seurat in 1884. Neo-Impressionism involved a scientific interpretation of colors and lines. The paint was applied in pure, unmixed dots and blocks of colors, creating a strong sense of organization. Scientific principles guided the choice of contrasting colors such that the colors interacted optically (instead of mixing the colors in the painting). This creates a special effect for the viewer.

Looking at the paintings from nearby, one sees a lot of dots of pure colors. However, from a distance, these colors interact beautifully, and the painting becomes a unified whole of almost unmatched clarity. One great example of this style from 1892 is Femmes au Puits by Paul Signac in the Musée d’Orsay. A later example from 1902 is Old Woman by Pablo Picasso in the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Femmes au Puits by Signac

Old Woman by Picasso in the Philadelphia Museum of Art

Who is Seurat? Georges-Pierre Seurat (1859-1891) was born and raised in Paris. He only became 31 years old and died in the midst of his career from an unknown disease. He was a Post-Impressionist painter. He can be classified even more accurately as a Neo-Impressionist painter.

Seurat received a classical art training at the traditional École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. While his painting style was far from traditional, his ideas benefited greatly from his education. He used a scientific approach to painting, whereby different colors can create different emotions and combining specific colors can create harmony in a painting.

Seurat decided not to combine colors in a painting, but instead to apply the colors separately, using small dots, and let the viewer combine the colors in his/her mind. The best-known painting by Seurat is A Sunday at La Grande Jatte – 1884  in the Art Institute of Chicago.

A Sunday at La Grande Jatte - 1884 by Seurat

Fun fact: Seurat completed this painting in 1885. Only three years later, he added the border of the painting. He did this to increase the brightness of the colors. This addition perfectly fits with the ideas and style of painting that Seurat used. The colors are carefully chosen to complement each other, and the contrasting colors in the border make the painting itself, and especially the sea and the sky stand out more. 

​Interested in a copy for yourself? Poster

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Written by Eelco Kappe

References: 

• www.moma.org/collection/works/79409