A room for late Impressionism
This room brings together canvases Claude Monet painted in the 1880s alongside Georges Seurat's masterpiece — a way of showing how a generation of painters younger than Monet tried to push the Impressionists' optical experiments further, in an almost scientific direction.
1. Dozens of studies for a single Sunday
A Sunday on La Grande Jatte — 1884, painted by Georges Seurat between 1884 and 1886, shows Parisians of every social class enjoying an afternoon by the Seine, on an island northwest of Paris. Seurat prepared this monumental canvas with an unusual number of studies: conté crayon drawings and oil sketches on panel, dozens of which are now scattered across museums around the world.
The painting entered the Art Institute of Chicago's collection in 1926, a gift from Bertha Palmer and her family, one of the great American collectors of Impressionism of her time.
2. Pointillism did not yet exist in the sketch
The oil sketch hung right next to the finished painting shows a still-loose brushwork made of diagonal, crisscrossing hatching strokes — Seurat had not yet reduced his touch to the uniform dot that would give pointillism its name. Comparing the two canvases, the sketch and the final version, is the best way to see the technical transformation Seurat carried out between the quick study and the finished work, where every stroke of pure color is meant to blend optically in the eye of a viewer standing a few steps back.
How much time
Step back several paces in front of the large canvas, then move in close: it is the only way to watch the optical mechanics of pointillism assemble and fall apart.
- A Sunday on La Grande Jatte — 1884 — 12 minutes.
- Its preparatory oil sketch — 5 minutes.
Sources and verification
Checked against the official notices of the Art Institute of Chicago (artic.edu) and cross-checked with Wikipedia EN/FR.
- Art Institute of Chicago — A Sunday on La Grande Jatte — 1884
- Art Institute of Chicago — Oil Sketch for "A Sunday on La Grande Jatte — 1884"
- Art Institute of Chicago — Seurat and "La Grande Jatte"
- Britannica — A Sunday on La Grande Jatte—1884
Displays and room openings can change. Check the Art Institute of Chicago website on the day of your visit before following a route.
Listen to the commentary in the gallery
This route gives you a thread to follow. In front of an artwork, CulturAll adds the audio commentary: photograph the work or its label, listen, then ask your questions.
