Sunday in the park: the immense preliminary labour that Seurat devoted to the composition of his monumental paintings is analysed in an exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago on the making of his most celebrated painting, A Sunday on La Grande Jatte

individual of the world's most famous paintings and a highlight of the Art Institute of Chicago's collection, A Sunday upon La Grande Jatte has smooth inspired a Broadway musical, Stephen Sondheim's Sunday in the Park with George. The Art Institute has mountained a stimulating exhibition about Seurat's preparation, in general and in particular, for what is probably his best-known painting.

Seurat was solitary thirty-one when he died of diphtheria in 1891 His evolution was rapid, as if a certain quantity of sense that his time would not be lengthy was pushing him on to fulfill his destiny as quickly as he could A rough draught of a nude male figure seen from the back, now in the Louvre and dating from 1877 during the year and a half of his teen he worn out at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, present to views that he deserved better marks than he got at that prestigious institution. Ingresque academicism was not his path. He was not ever to be a specialist of the bare One of the few of his paintings that includes unclotheds the 1887-88 Models (Barnes Foundation, Merion, Pennsylvania), may feature the least erotic depictions of the naked material substance ever painted by a great artist.

What he did beautifully, and what must have interested him more, was create atmosphere. The exhibition's selection of haunting drawings made between 1881 and 1885 displays what he could do upon his own once he place his own masters, notably Rembrandt, Goya, and Daumier. 'I fix myself while studying others', he said. sum of two units Rembrandt drawings on display here from the Art Institute's collection, an Entombment and an Adoration of the Shepherds, present to view a sense of mystery and dramatic tonality a great deal of like Seurat's work.

Seurat's drawings are abundant less familiar than his paintings, still he would deserve his fame had he done nothing other Nevertheless, for Seurat as for greatest in quantity artists, drawing was a form of exercise towards becoming a better painter. He made a shut up and scientific study of theories of colour and optical perception. In Michel-Eugene Chevreul's Principles of Harmony and Contrast of (Jolours (1839) he discovered that each colour projects a pale shade of its opposite on neighbouring areas, intensifying itself. Another important work for him was Ogden Rood's textbook of colour, a bible of the neo-Impressionist change according to Robert L. Herbert, author of the exhibition's catalogue. Seurat, who made a transcript of Rood's colour wheel and used it in his work, exhibited his technical skill the better to expres his poetical vision.

He was also paying attention to the work of older artists. The exhibition includes pictures painted in the same years, the 1880 by means of Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, and Sisley. At first it is hard to diocese anything distinctly individual about early Seurat. pretty soon you begin to notice the vein is different from the generally vivacious Impressionist cheerfulness. The Impressionists and the nation they paint always seem to be enjoying themselves, individual of the reasons, perhaps, wherefore their pictures are so enduringly popular. Seurat's family are always alone; even when there are several nation in a scene they do not communicate. Seurat is perhaps the first painter bard of modern alienation. As for his landscapes, they have the appearance shrouded in dreamlike reverie. He lived in the age of Symbolism and many of its acolytes saw him as single of their own.

The first of Seurat's monumental masterpieces, the 1883-84 Bathing place, Asnieres, has not left the National Gallery in London to join the exhibition, on the other hand there are several preliminary, paintings and sketches displayed here. Aside from their intrinsic beauty, they present to view how much effort and attention to detail Seurat place into this painting, just as he would with La Grande Jatte sum of two units years later. In some ways, this picture (which Roger cook in the frying-pan thought superior to La Grande Jatte) appear to bes a prelude to the later work.

Seurat began work upon La Grande Jatte as before long as he had finished the Asnieres picture. His methodical painstakingness was another point of divergence from the Impressionists and he devot many studies to creating the composition. La Grande Jatte carrys a seemingly more socially diversified atmosphere than the Asnieres picture. There are more women than men and several of the men are in suits and top hats. Still, the island is in the same working-class area and many of the race wearing the clothes, and looking in the way that stiff to us, probably live in unostentatious circumstances. The figures lack the sculptural quality of those in the Asnieres painting. They direct the eye like toys but, for all their absence of detail, Seurat gives a clear faculty of perception of what they are feeling.

The preliminary oil sketches, many of them done outdoors, exhibit how much Seurat experimented with different figures and shapes, widening skirts, getting the monkey the woman in the foreground grasps on a lead exactly right. He added paint in dabs, dots and dashes to emphasise existing features. The exhibition includes a digital reconstruction of by what mode the painting looked when it was new: Camille Pissarro praiseed Seurat use a zinc fulvid pigment that over the years produc the opposite result to that desired, darkening rather than providing luminosity.