the tone is new. Compare, for instance, this painting’s mood with the
relaxed and casual atmosphere of Renoir’s Le Moulin de la Galette
(FIG. 31-8). Toulouse-Lautrec’s scene is nightlife, with its glaring ar-
tificial light, brassy music, and assortment of corrupt, cruel, and
masklike faces. (He included himself in the background—the tiny
man with the derby accompanying the very tall man, his cousin.)
Such distortions by simplification of the figures and faces antici-
pated Expressionism (see Chapter 35), when artists’ use of formal el-
ements—for example, brighter colors and bolder lines than ever be-
fore—increased the impact of the images on observers.
GEORGES SEURATThe themes Georges Seurat(1859–1891)
addressed in his paintings were also Impressionist subjects, but he de-
picted them in a resolutely intellectual way. He devised a disciplined
and painstaking system of painting that focused on color analysis. Seu-
rat was less concerned with the recording of immediate color sensa-
tions than he was with their careful and systematic organization into a
new kind of pictorial order. He disciplined the free and fluent play of
color that characterized Impressionism into a calculated arrangement
based on scientific color theory (see “19th-Century Color Theory,”
above). Seurat’s system, known as pointillism or divisionism,involves
carefully observing color and separating it into its component parts.
The artist then applies these pure component colors to the canvas in
tiny dots (points) or daubs. Thus, the shapes, figures, and spaces in the
image become totally comprehensible only from a distance, when the
viewer’s eye blends the many pigment dots.
Pointillism was on view at the eighth and last Impressionist ex-
hibition in 1886, when Seurat showed his A Sunday on La Grande
Jatte (FIG. 31-15). The subject of the painting is consistent with
Impressionist recreational themes, and Seurat also shared the Im-
pressionists’ interest in analyzing light and color. But Seurat’s rendi-
tion is strangely rigid and remote, unlike the spontaneous repre-
sentations of most Impressionists. Seurat applied pointillism to
produce a carefully composed and painted image. By using meticu-
lously calculated values, the painter carved out a deep rectangular
space. He played on repeated motifs both to create flat patterns and
to suggest spatial depth. Reiterating the profile of the female form,
the parasol, and the cylindrical forms of the figures, Seurat placed
each in space to set up a rhythmic movement in depth as well as
from side to side. Sunshine fills the picture, but the painter did not
break the light into transient patches of color. Light, air, people, and
landscape are formal elements in an abstract design in which line,
color, value, and shape cohere in a precise and tightly controlled or-
ganization. Seurat’s orchestration of the many forms across the
monumental (almost 7-by-10-foot) canvas created a rhythmic ca-
dence that harmonizes the entire composition.
Seurat once stated: “They see poetry in what I have done. No, I
apply my method, and that is all there is to it.”^8 Despite this claim,832 Chapter 31 EUROPE AND AMERICA, 1870 TO 1900I
n the 19th century, advances in the sciences contributed to chang-
ing theories about color and how people perceive it. Many physi-
cists and chemists immersed themselves in studying optical recep-
tion and the behavior of the human eye in response to light of
differing wavelengths. They also investigated the psychological di-
mension of color. These new ideas about color and its perception
provided a framework within which artists such as Georges Seurat
worked. Although historians do not know which publications on
color Seurat himself read, he no doubt relied on aspects of these
evolving theories to develop pointillism (FIG. 31-15).
Discussions of color often focus on hue(for example, red, yel-
low, and blue), but it is important to consider the other facets of
color—saturation(the hue’s brightness or dullness) and value(the
hue’s lightness or darkness). Most artists during the 19th century un-
derstood the concepts ofprimary colors(red, yellow, and blue),sec-
ondary colors(orange, purple, and green), and complementary colors
(red and green, yellow and purple, blue and orange; see Introduction,
page 7). Chemist Michel-Eugène Chevreul (1786–1889) extended
artists’ understanding of color dynamics by formulating the law ofsi-
multaneous contrastsof colors. Chevreul asserted that juxtaposed col-
ors affect the eye’s reception of each, making the two colors as dissim-
ilar as possible, both in hue and in value. For example, placing light
green next to dark green has the effect of making the light green look
even lighter and the dark green darker. Chevreul further provided an
explanation ofsuccessive contrasts—the phenomenon of colored af-
terimages. When a person looks intently at a color (green, for exam-
ple) and then shifts to a white area, the fatigued eye momentarily per-
ceives the complementary color (red).
Charles Blanc (1813–1882), who coined the term optical mixture
to describe the visual effect of juxtaposed complementary colors, as-
serted that the smaller the areas of adjoining complementary colors,
the greater the tendency for the eye to “mix” the colors, so that the
viewer perceives a grayish or neutral tint. Seurat used this principle
frequently in his paintings.
Also influential for Seurat was the work of physicist Ogden
Rood (1831–1902), who published his ideas in Modern Chromatics,
with Applications to Art and Industry in 1879. Expanding on the ideas
of Chevreul and Blanc, Rood constructed an accurate and under-
standable diagram of contrasting colors. Further (and particularly
significant to Seurat), Rood explored representing color gradation.
He suggested that artists could achieve gradation by placing small
dots or lines of color side by side, which he observed would blend in
the eye of the beholder when viewed from a distance.
The color experiments of Seurat and other late-19th-century
artists were also part of a larger discourse about human vision and
how people see and understand the world. The theories of physicist
Ernst Mach (1838–1916) focused on the psychological experience of
sensation. He believed humans perceive their environments in iso-
lated units of sensation that the brain then recomposes into a com-
prehensible world. Another scientist, Charles Henry (1859–1926),
also pursued research into the psychological dimension of color—
how colors affect people, and under what conditions. He went even
further to explore the physiological effects of perception. Seurat’s
work, though characterized by a systematic and scientifically minded
approach, also incorporated his concerns about the emotional tone
of the images.Theory ❚MATERIALS AND TECHNIQUES: 19th-Century Color
MATERIALS AND TECHNIQUES