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Georges Seurat made a remarkable impact on the art world, despite sadly passing away at only 32 years old!

Georges Seurat made a remarkable impact on the art world, despite sadly passing away at only 32 years old!

With his large scale works like the “Bathers at Asnières” and “La Grande Jatte” alongside so many other innovative masterpieces - Seurat was one of the great pioneers of the “pointillist” style of painting (i.e constructing pictures through interlinking/pixelating dots rather than actual brushstrokes).

And along with being a great painter, he was also profoundly interested in the science of colour theory in general . . . reading many of the great physicists and philosophers of his era, in the hope of eventually authoring his own definitive study on the rules of colour. (i.e exploring how certain shades always create certain emotions - and how even things like sadness, calmness, or harmony in art can be dictated simply by the direction of a brushstroke, without the need for any other narrative / context)

Thus, he is certainly a man who left a lot of unfinished business in his career.

But still, we can only be grateful for the legacy Seurat did leave us. And while the true detail of his pointillism sadly does not really come across well on a computer screen - there is no doubt at all that the bright and beautiful quality of his art always shine through, no matter where we might come across it.

So, rather than spend too long on a complicated analysis of the science or the history behind Seurat’s development of this style . . . I want to use our exhibition here today to simply enjoy the work itself, almost as if we are taking a gentle walk into the very heart of a pointillist paradise!

And as we step into Seurat’s unique vision of this world - I can think of no better place to start than with a few quotes from the man himself.

“Art is Harmony. . . Art is the language of the soul . . . a conversation between the artist and the viewer.”

“A masterpiece is not defined by its perfection, but by its ability to speak to the human spirit”

“Through art, we can find beauty in the mundane and meaning in the chaos.”