Georges-Pierre Seurat, The Channel at Gravelines, Evening, 1890, oil on canvas, 25 by 32 inches, courtesy Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Somehow, the images always seem to be the same, and yet never really are. The scene might be set in Paris, or perhaps in a bucolic and now forgotten port town. People are often absent, but when present, are stylized and rendered as beautiful impossibilities. The rosy glow of Impressionism tinges everything, but what is pictured extends far beyond the rote beauty of the sun’s shifting rays. Georges-Pierre Seurat painted pointillist fantasies in which the sun is always setting, the remaining light of the day filtered not though dust but through stippled, composited specks of unmixed color. Continue reading…
