Style Imitating Art | “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte” by Georges Seurat

About Style Imitating Art

Style Imitating Art is hosted by Salazar of 14 Shades of Grey, Shelbee of Shelbee on the Edge, and Marsha of Marsha in the Middle. Style Imitating Art challenges us to draw style inspiration from pieces of art. Every other Monday, one of the hosts, acting as presenter, selects an inspiration image that they will each post on their blogs. The following Monday, each host shares her art inspired outfit. Participants are invited to submit their art inspired outfits to the presenter by 10:00 p.m. EST on the Tuesday following the hosts’ art inspired outfit posts. The following day, Wednesday, the presenter will share all of the submissions on her blog.

You don’t have to be a blogger to join either! In fact, you don’t even have to join but you can still use the art to inspire an outfit just for the sake of trying something different. If you want to share your inspired outfit, we invite you do so on Instagram or any other social media platform that you prefer. Just be sure to tag Salazar, Shelbee, or Marsha or use #TeamLOTSStyle and #StyleImitatingArt so the hosts know you have joined. Go have some fun in your closets and join the SIA challenge next week!

This Week’s Presenter

That would be me! To honor the 2024 Paris Olympics, I chose a French artist, Georges Seurat, and his late 19th century painting, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, featuring a promenade of people in a park on the banks of the River Seine. During grade school art classes, I learned about the pointillistic technique developed by Seurat and fellow French painter Paul Signac and I have been drawn to this style of painting ever since. I chose this particular work because it gives me a sense of friendliness and joy among strangers enjoying the same experience in tandem. I think it is a perfect way to celebrate the Olympic tradition, the world’s greatest athletes, their accomplishments, and competitive camaraderie among nations.

On the topic of the Olympics, I watched most of the games over the past few weeks and there were so many wonderful moments. I smiled, laughed, and cried so many times I lost count. My most favorite part, however, was when Michael Phelps gave swim lessons to Snoop Dogg. That segment of television fun really made my day. What was your favorite part?

The Artwork

A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte by Georges Seurat

About the Artist: Georges Pierre Seurat

Georges Pierre Seurat was the youngest of three children born to Antoine Chrysostome Seurat, a former legal official who had become wealthy through property speculation, and Ernestine Faivre. Georges was born in Paris, France, on December 2, 1859. Around 1862 or 1863, the family moved while his father maintained a separate residence, visiting them once a week.

Seurat first began his art studies near his home at the École Municipale de Sculpture et Dessin. In 1878, he moved to the École des Beaux-Arts where he received more conventional academic training in the arts. In November 1879, he ended his formal art education by leaving school for a year of military service. After one year at the Brest Military Academy, Seurat returned to Paris, rented a small apartment, and shared studio space with his friend and fellow artist, Edmond Aman-Jean. He would spend the next two years mastering the art of monochrome drawing.

Seurat’s first exhibited work was shown at the Paris Salon in 1883 and was a Conté crayon drawing of Aman-Jean. He spent most of that year in 1883 working on his first major painting, Bathers at Asnières, a large oil on canvas featuring young working class men relaxing by the Seine in a suburb of Paris. Bathers at Asnières was rejected by the Paris Salon so Seurat exhibited the work at the Groupe des Artistes Indépendants in May 1884. However, this experience left Seurat feeling disappointed with the poor organization of the Indépendants which led to the formation of a new artists’ collective, the Société des Artistes Indépendants. Within this new group, Seurat’s ideas on pointillism began having a strong influence on other artists in the community. In the summer of 1884, Seurat began working on A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte which is a leading example of the pointillist technique in painting.

Seurat had an ongoing relationship with Madeleine Knobloch, a model who was the subject of his 1889 painting, Young Woman Powdering Herself (or, Jeune femme se poudrant). Seurat concealed his relationship with Knobloch until she moved into his seventh floor studio with him in 1889. When Knobloch became pregnant later that year, they moved to a new studio where she gave birth to their son, Pierre-Georges, on February 16, 1890.

Seurat spent the summer of 1890 on the northern coast of France where he completed four canvases, eight oil panels, and numerous drawings. The next spring, on March 29, 1891, Georges Seurat died in his parents’ home in Paris. He was 31 years old. His cause of death remains uncertain but has often been attributed to some form of meningitis, pneumonia, infectious angina, or diphtheria. His son, just barely a year old, died two months later from the same illness. As the time of his death, Seurat’s final ambitious work, The Circus, was left unfinished. Madeleine was also pregnant with the couple’s second child when she lost both her partner and her first born. The second child also died either during childbirth or shortly after.

About the Art: “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte”

A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte is Seurat’s most famous work and a prominent example of the pointillist technique which he is credited with developing as a branch of Impressionism.

Pointillism is a technique where you apply dots of colored paints to form patterns or an image. The practice of pointillism is in direct contrast to the traditional method of painting where pigmented colors are blended on a palette and applied with brushstrokes.

As I mentioned above, I have been fascinated by this technique since I first learned of it in grade school art class. I remember my mother teaching me how to do it on ceramics as well. She was a master pointillist! One of my kids was learning about pointillism during the homeschool part of the pandemic. As part of the lesson, we made this pointillist painting of a didgeridoo together.

Let’s get back to Seurat’s painting. A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (Un dimanche après-midi à l’Île de la Grande Jatte) was painted in oils on canvas from 1884 to 1886. It is Seurat’s largest painting, measuring 207.6 cm × 308 cm (81.7 in × 121.25 in). He worked in stages, beginning in 1884 with a layer of complementary colors applied in small horizontal brushstrokes. The dots were added later and appear as solid dimensional forms when viewed from a distance. In 1889, he restretched the canvas and added a red, orange, and blue dotted border to create a visual transition between the painting’s interior and its specially designed white frame.

Upon Seurat’s death in 1891, his mother inherited the painting. When Mme. Seurat died in 1899, the artist’s brother, Emile Seurat, inherited the work. He promptly sold it in 1900 to Casimir Brû of Paris for 800 francs (approximately $5,300 in today’s US dollars). Casimir gave the painting to his daughter Lucie, also of Paris, that same year. Lucie Brû maintained the painting for 24 years until she and her husband, Edmond Cousturier, sold it to Frederic Clay and Helen Birch Bartlett of Chicago for $20,000 ($367,000 in today’s value).

In 1923, Frederic Bartlett was appointed trustee of the Art Institute of Chicago. In 1924, he and his wife Helen loaned their personal collection of French Post-Impressionist and Modernist art to the museum. This collection included their recent purchase of A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. According to Wikipedia, upon the advice of the museum’s curatorial staff, the Art Institute of Chicago purchased the painting in 1924. However, the Art Institute of Chicago calls it a 1926 gift from the Helen Birch Bartlett Memorial Collection. The original work is currently on view in at the Art Institute of Chicago.

References/Resources

• Georges Seurat: Wikipedia
• A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte: Wikipedia
• A Sunday on La Grande Jatte: Google Arts & Culture
• La Grande Jatte, Frame by Frame: Art Institute of Chicago
• A Sunday on La Grande Jatte — 1884: Art Institute of Chicago

About My Outfit

Once again, I stumped myself! There is a lot going on in this painting that could inspire an outfit. I just needed to focus on one small part and not try to capture the entire painting in one look.

I found my eye was most drawn to the lady in the center of the painting holding the hand of the little girl in the white dress. I decided to focus on her as my main outfit inspiration and then add some more detailed elements with my accessories.

I really liked the combination of the woman’s pale pink skirt with her rusty orange jacket and umbrella so I knew that would be my primary color palette. However, I didn’t have any dresses in a rusty orange shade! I improvised with the closest color in my closet which was this light maroon maxi dress. I added a pale pink lace kimono robe to represent the color of her skirt as well as the more feminine styles of the 1880s.

Many figures in the painting are clad in black and donning hats. To represent them all, I wore a black straw hat and black rope sandals. To capture the other dominant colors from the painting, my necklaces and earrings incorporate green, yellow, blue, orange, and black. Obviously, I had to include an umbrella in my photos. But it’s not just any umbrella this time. It is covered in colorful dots…a perfect way to represent pointillism!

I really liked this outfit a lot. I intended on wearing it to a Fireside Collective show in Pennsylvania last weekend but the weather turned terribly rainy making both my long robe and my rope sandals completely impractical. So I switched to a shorter robe and Furkenstocks and was super comfortable for the four hour drive and the icky weather. Below is the only photo we took at the show but you can sort of see the altered version of my outfit.

How do you think I did with this challenge?

If you want to play along and be featured with your art inspired outfit in my gallery post on Wednesday, August 14, 2024, be sure to submit your photos to me at shelbeeontheedge@gmail.com by 10:00 p.m. EST on Tuesday, August 13, 2024. In the meantime, be sure to check out Salazar’s interpretation of this painting as well as Marsha’s take on it. 

Happy styling, my friends!

Shelbee

Joining these Fabulous Link Parties.