Georges Seurat - A Sunday on La Grande Jatte Baby Burp Cloth

A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (Un dimanche après-midi à l'Île de la Grande Jatte), painted by Georges Seurat between 1884 and 1886 in oil on canvas, transforms a leisurely Sunday beside the Seine into a monumental scene of fashionable Parisians strolling, sitting, socializing and relaxing beneath the trees. Seurat spent two years developing the composition through nearly sixty preparatory drawings, painted panels and larger studies. In the finished work, he juxtaposed countless small touches and dots of pure, contrasting color so that they blend optically in the viewer’s eye when seen from a distance. This systematic technique, known as Divisionism or Pointillism, broke decisively with the spontaneous brushwork of Impressionism. Exhibited in 1886, the painting became the defining masterpiece of Seurat’s career and a manifesto for the new Neo-Impressionist movement.