georges seurat painted sunday afternoon on the island of la grande jatte.
who painted sunday afternoon on the island of la grande jatte?
georges seurat
a sunday afternoon on the island of la grande jatte









































a sunday afternoon on the island of la grande jatte () painted in 1884, is georges seurat's most famous work. it is a leading example of pointillist technique, executed on a large canvas. seurat's composition includes a number of parisians at a park on the banks of the river seine.









































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a sunday afternoon on the island of la grande jatte
x-ray imaging of the "bathers" has revealed that some components of the composition were altered as seurat’s work on the canvas progressed, while other components were probably not in the painting at all, as he first painted it. the two reclining figures—one at the front of the image, the other with the straw hat toward the rear—are revealed by the x-ray image to have been among the later concerns for seurat. the reclining man at the front has had the position of his legs moved to a position more horizontal than that in which they were when first painted. the reclining figure toward the rear is not visible in the x-ray image at all, showing he is a late addition. his posture reflects the altered position of the man in the foreground, raising the suggestion that he was painted in as a compositional response to the alteration made to the man at the front. the skiff and the ferry boat with the tricolor, and the pointillistically applied spots at various locations in the lower mid-section of the painting, are also absent in the x-ray image. a contentious theory suggests that these elements were added by seurat as a means of making a connection between the "bathers" and "a sunday afternoon on the island of la grande jatte". in spite of their remoteness in the middle distance, the motifs and the seated figures on the boat are present in the later painting, and the ferry boat indeed traverses the river between the courbevoie river-bank and the "île de la grande jatte" itself. the late additions in "bathers" bring for the first time a note of vitality to the serene picture in keeping with the more "sociable" climate of "a sunday afternoon on the island of la grande jatte".
bathers at asnières