As I gaze at the still, fixed figures in Georges Seurat's La Grande Jatte (1884 -1886), I feel myself moving into the frame, becoming one of the women dressed in Sunday finery, staring at the rippling surface of the lake before me. I hold a parasol above my head, slightly angled to prevent the sun from beating down on my exposed neck. I am accompanied by my husband, who stares straight ahead, occupying a space next to me but somehow separated from my presence. I feel the heat of the day, I hear the sounds of children sailing their boats on the lake, and I smell the scent of blooming flowers and the picnic lunch of a family seated before me. I am calm, happy, and fixed in time and space.
I have entered into a world that no longer exists, a world that is evocative of Paris at the close of the 19th century, when women wore long dresses and men carried walking sticks. This world, as painted by Seurat, is precise; each figure, each tree, every bit of light and shadow are placed to make a statement and to reflect a pattern (Gardner 684). The colors of this world are vibrant yet somehow muted, consisting of tiny "dots" of color and light that are a bit shy of photographic in their impact. As I gaze at myself in the frame, I take on the attitude of a Sunday afternoon at leisure, spent in the company of other city-dwellers relaxing in the temperate air of a beautiful day.
Seurat, born in 1859 and died in 1891, had a short but brilliant career (Janson 643). Seeking to make Impressionism "solid and durable" like Cezanne, he did not work in the hazy, vibrant brushstrokes of other Impressionists. As this painting demonstrates, he was more interested in the patterns created by the presence of many different objects (human and animal, water and trees) in a single confined space. He brought light to bear on his subjects, but he created a world that is less personal, more static than those created by others in the genre. His was a sho...