This painting is Seurat's final sketch for his masterpiece, A Sunday on La Grande Jatte (Art Institute of Chicago). The much larger, finished version was shown in the eighth Impressionist exhibition in 1886. Seurat analyzed the elements of his composition with nearly scientific care in at least thirty-two preparatory drawings and paintings. The scene depicted is an island in the Seine where working-class Parisians strolled, relaxed, and fished on Sundays. In a letter of 1890, Seurat states that he began work on the final canvas about August 15, 1884. In October 1885, he met Camille Pissarro and, following his advice, repainted the canvas using pigments that by 1892 had begun to lose their brilliance. The present study provides, therefore, a record of the chromatic intensity which the artist intended to achieve in the full-scale painting. As in the final work, the sketch juxtaposes contrasting pigments and depends on optical mixture—the phenomenon that causes two tones seen at a distance to form a single hue—to create the desired effect. Seurat based his knowledge of the science of color on the technical treatises of M. E. Chevreul (Principles of Harmony and Contrast of Colours, 1839) and Ogden N. Rood (Modern Chromatics, 1879). In this sketch, the pigments are woven together with small, patchy brushstrokes, while in the final painting Seurat used the small dots characteristic of his Pointillist technique. After the sketch was finished, he restretched the canvas and added the border at the edge.

Open full-size and alternate view(s)