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A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte

Georges Seurat, 1884

Georges Seurat's A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte belongs to the Art Institute of Chicago. Seurat began the large oil on canvas in 1884, worked on it until 1886, and later added a painted border. It is a picture that rewards both a wide view and close inspection.

Where to see it

A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte is in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, where it is part of the Helen Birch Bartlett Memorial Collection. The canvas measures 207.5 × 308.1 cm (81 3/4 × 121 1/4 in.), so allow room to step back as well as move in close. Display arrangements can change, so check the Art Institute of Chicago's official website for the painting's current display status before you visit.

What to look for in person

The painted border and the new frame

Before stepping close, look at the edges of the canvas. Seurat painted a narrow border directly onto it in 1888–89, a few years after he had finished the main scene. Made of small touches of colour, the border works as a transition between the park and whatever surrounds the picture, showing that Seurat thought about how the painting would meet its frame and the wall. The frame itself is recent: in 2022 a new one was made, designed to follow what conservators judged to be Seurat's most likely intentions.

Small touches of colour, and grass that has changed

Up close, the surface breaks into small, separate strokes and dots of colour that merge into figures, shadows and water as you move back. Try viewing from several distances to watch that shift happen. Then look at the sunlit patches of grass. Seurat used zinc yellow for those highlights, and the pigment has darkened to brown over time, a change that was already noticeable during his lifetime. What reads today as dull, olive-toned grass was meant to look brighter, so picture those patches lighter as you look.

A frieze of Parisians at leisure

The canvas shows Parisians of different ages and classes spending leisure time in a park beside the Seine. Notice how many figures stand or sit in profile, still and evenly spaced, rather than caught in motion. Seurat told the critic Gustave Kahn that he had the Panathenaic procession of the Parthenon frieze in mind as a model, and the measured, processional rhythm becomes easier to see once you know this. On the right, find the couple in the foreground: the woman holds a monkey on a leash, one of the scene's most memorable details.

About the painting

Seurat started A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte in 1884 and kept working on it until 1886; the painted border followed in 1888–89. The signature 'Seurat' appears at the lower right, worth looking for once you have taken in the whole scene. The painting was first shown publicly in 1886 at the eighth and final Impressionist exhibition, and later that same year at the second Salon of the Société des Artistes Indépendants. In 1887 it travelled to Brussels for the Salon des XX. The picture stayed in the family: it belonged to the artist's mother until her death in 1899. In 1900 Emile Seurat sold it to Léon-Casimir Bru for 800 francs. Bru's daughter, the artist Lucie Cousturier, sold it in 1924 to the Charles Vildrac gallery, which passed it on that same year to Frederic Clay and Helen Birch Bartlett. The Bartletts gave the painting to the Art Institute of Chicago, and the museum credits it to the Helen Birch Bartlett Memorial Collection. Their gift came with a condition that ruled out outside loans, with a single exception. That one loan took place in 1958, when the painting went to the Museum of Modern Art in New York; during a fire at MoMA on 15 April 1958 it was evacuated to the Whitney Museum. For readers who want to follow the scholarship, the work is catalogued as no. 139 in Dorra and Rewald (1959) and no. 162 in de Hauke (1961).

Key facts

More by Georges Seurat

• Bathers at Asnières — National Gallery
• The Circus — Musée d'Orsay
• The Eiffel Tower
• The Circus Parade — Metropolitan Museum of Art
• Le Chahut — Kröller-Müller Museum

Sources

• Wikidata Q1044742
• Wikipedia (en) (CC BY-SA 4.0)
• Wikipedia (fr) (CC BY-SA 4.0)
• Art Institute of Chicago (CC0 (description: CC BY 4.0))
• www.artic.edu