Seurat Sunday Afternoon La Grande Jatte Fine Art Postcard

Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (Un dimanche après-midi à l'Ile de la Grande Jatte), Georges Seurat, 1884-86. Oil on canvas, 81 x 120 in. Art Institute of Chicago. This painting was described by a contemporary of Seurat as follows: Under a blazing midafternoon summer sky, we see the Seine flooded with sunshine, smart town houses on the opposite bank, and small steamboats, sailboats, and a skiff moving up and down the river. Under the trees closer to us many people are strolling, others are sitting or stretched out lazily on the bluish grass. A few are fishing. There are young ladies, a nursemaid, a Dantesque old grandmother under a parasol, a sprawled-out boatman smoking his pipe, the lower part of his trousers completely devoured by the implacable sunlight. A dark-colored dog of no particular breed is sniffing around, a rust-colored butterfly hovers in mid-air, a young mother is strolling with her little girl dressed in white with a salmon-colored sash, two budding young Army officers from Saint-Cyr are walking by the water. Of the young ladies, one of them is making a bouquet, another is a girl with red hair in a blue dress. We see a married couple carrying a baby, and, at the extreme right, appears a scandalously hieratic-looking couple, a young dandy with a rather excessively elegant lady on his arm who has a yellow, purple, and ultramarine monkey on a leash. This was the first pointillist painting, made with tiny dots of color, and is still the most famous. Vintage Impressionism and Pointillism fine art painting.