French Pointillist Painter, 1859-1891 Georges-Pierre Seurat (2 December 1859 ?C 29 March 1891) was a French painter and draftsman. His large work Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, his most famous painting, altered the direction of modern art by initiating Neo-impressionism, and is one of the icons of 19th century painting Seurat took to heart the color theorists' notion of a scientific approach to painting. Seurat believed that a painter could use color to create harmony and emotion in art in the same way that a musician uses counterpoint and variation to create harmony in music. Seurat theorized that the scientific application of color was like any other natural law, and he was driven to prove this conjecture. He thought that the knowledge of perception and optical laws could be used to create a new language of art based on its own set of heuristics and he set out to show this language using lines, color intensity and color schema. Seurat called this language Chromoluminarism. His letter to Maurice Beaubourg in 1890 captures his feelings about the scientific approach to emotion and harmony. He says "Art is Harmony. Harmony is the analogy of the contrary and of similar elements of tone, of color and of line, considered according to their dominance and under the influence of light, in gay, calm or sad combinations". Seurat's theories can be summarized as follows: The emotion of gaiety can be achieved by the domination of luminous hues, by the predominance of warm colors, and by the use of lines directed upward. Calm is achieved through an equivalence/balance of the use of the light and the dark, by the balance of warm and cold colors, and by lines that are horizontal. Sadness is achieved by using dark and cold colors and by lines pointing downwards.  Related Paintings of Georges Seurat :. | Georges Seurat | Houses at Le Raincy | The small Peasant sat on the lawn of the Pasture | Iron tower | Port en Bessin, Sunday |
Related Artists:
Evaristo Baschenis
1617-1677 Italian Evaristo Baschenis Galleries Italian painter. He came from a family of painters originally from Averara, Lombardy, but with different branches active in the provinces of Bergamo and Trentino, mostly specializing in fresco decoration of churches. He probably started working within the same regional tradition but soon came to specialize in still-lifes and moved beyond his familys limited and provincial style to create a richer and more complex art.
Hans Smidth
Hans Ludvig Smidth (2 October 1839, Nakskov - 5 May 1917, Frederiksberg) was a Danish painter. He is remembered above all for his paintings of Jutland and its local inhabitants. Smidth was the son of the city bailiff of Skive, Edvard Philip Smidth, and the brother of Verner Frederik Læssøe Smidth who founded the cement concern F. L. Smidth & Co. After graduating from school, he began to study medicine but gave it up in favour of art. In 1861, he entered the Danish Academy where he studied under Niels Simonsen. In 1866, he began to experience financial difficulties and left the Academy to continue his studies himself, painting scenes of Limfjord and the moors of Jutland. He first exhibited at Charlottenborg in 1867 with two landscape paintings and continued to exhibit there over the years. His works depicted country life in Jutland, most of them with an emphasis on animals and local figures. He had a talent for form and detail but his use of colour was rather dry, dimishing the appeal of his paintings to the general public. In 1870-71, he studied under Vilhelm Kyhn. As the years went by, Smidth's style developed considerably, earning him the Neuhausen Prize in 1877 for En fremmed spørger om Vej i Bondegaarden paa Heden which was not only technically impressive but showed a fineness of tone. His increasing acceptance as a master of painting in Jutland paved the way for his reputation at the national level. In fact Smidth had to wait until the year 1900 before he experienced full recognition. That year the Danish Art Society arranged a special exhibition of the artist's work although he was now 60. Unexpectedly 290 of the 300 works sketches and drawings exhibited were sold. In retrospect, his paintings are free of historical or mythical figures, they do not interpret scenes along the lines of the Skagen Painters. They simply depict the views of the people and the countryside as he saw them. His paintings show he had the same respect for the land as the peasants themselves.
Fernard Leger
France.1881-1955