Blanc's Rose Chromatique, 18671.
| Seurat(1859-91) is renowned as the modernist artists who applied science to art. He imposed the logic and discipline of scientific colour theory on the techniques and naturalist themes of Impressionism, with which he held a common aim- light and colour. His interest in scientific treatises on optics and colour has helped to create an image of an artist who championed the ideals of objectivity, and aimed to gain ultimate control of his medium. However, it must be stated before elaborating on his interest in scientific theory that his aims went beyond simply systematizing the Impressionists observation of the phenomena of nature. He employed scientific theory as a way of validating and expressing, not only the social message of his art, but also a deeper utopian vision. His artistic impulses and vision were reflective of, and under the influence of the Symbolist aesthetic so dominant at this time. | |||
| For his scientific approach to painting Seurat was indebted to a number of the nineteenth century theoreticians who had reawakened the debate on colour theory’s relation to aesthetics. Chevreul’s theory of simultaneous contrast, widely read by his contemporaries, was likely to have been Seurat’s earliest source of information. Although perhaps the most influential on his mature style was Charles Blanc’s(1813-1882) 'Grammaire des arts du dessin' (1867). Blanc put forward the idea that there existed a grammar of colour that could be taught in the same way as musical harmony. He emphasized the fact that colour obeys invariable principles and fixed laws which can, when applied correctly, empower the painters means of expression. His theory was based on that of Newton, who, in 'Opticks'(1704), supported the belief in a quantifiable colour order. Blanc also adopted Newton’s distinction between three primaries red, yellow and blue and three composite or binary colours violet, green and orange. | Blanc's Rose Chromatique, 18671. |
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| Seurat’s colour rationale based on his reading of Blanc and Chevreul, one would think, would have been consistent with the Newtonian system. However, there is also evidence that he came into contact with Ogden Rood’s ‘Modern Chromatic (1879) which included green as one of the primaries. What this tells us is that Seurat did not dedicate himself to one theory or was particularly strict in his scientific methods, but that he was quite empirical in his approach. | |
 Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, 1884-862. |
Both Blanc and Rood discuss 'optical mixture': "when different colours are placed side by side in hues or dots, and then viewed at such a distance that the blending is more or less accomplished in the eye of the beholder....the tints mix on the retina and produce new colours"3. This principle underlies Seurats ‘divisionist’ method which was fully revealed for the first time in ‘A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte’ (1884). Instead of mixing pigments on the palette Seurat mixed colours by juxtaposing very small dashes of pure colour on the canvas. Rood had recommended this technique in order to better capture natural luminosity. Blanc, on the other hand, believed that the harmonious effects of such a treatment would elevate the painting above naturalism to an expression of a higher ideal. |
| Seurat’s method of harmonising complementaries-yellow-green/ blue-violet/ red-orange/ blue-green enriched and enlivened the paintings overall appearance. His methodical and balanced application of colour touches may well have been inspired by Delacroix’s intuitive command of in colour harmony. In Blanc’s description Delacroix’s works were "calculated with such rigor that, if one tried to remove from, or add to, the painting a single colour, or to modify its shade, or change its position, the whole apparatus would collapse’4. Signac(1863-1935) in his book ‘D’Eugene Delacroix au neo-impressionisme’ (1899) also praised the romantic painter for his ingenious use of colour, claiming that it was Delacroix who laid the foundations for the colour harmony attained by the Neo-Impressionists. | The use of optical mixture in ‘La Grande Jatte’: the brown of the tree next to the wet nurse is produced largely through an optical mixture of red, orange, green and blue. The myriad of individual touches mix optically to the degree that, at least at a distance, the painting has a warm, coherent ‘harmony’. Detail from 'La Grande Jatte' 5. |
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| Felix Feneon's article ‘Le neo-impressionnisme’(1887), which has come to be regarded as the main source of information on Seurat's aims and and techniques, has helped, with its emphasis on scientific theory, to obscure the more subtle philoshical overtones in his work. Signac describes Seurat as employing "his knowledge in the service of his sensations"6. His aim to accuratly capture light and colour went beyond a 'naturalist' intention, in fact, his increasingly methodical technique took him further and further away from observed reality. His stripping away of the casual and accidental features of reality was in order to reveal the essence of nature. Feneon at the end of ‘Neo-impressionaire’sums up : "for them, objective reality is simply a theme in the creation of a higher and sublimated reality"7. Blanc had given Seurat an Idealist rationale for the use of his objectified and ordered methodology- his real aim being an art of harmony. | ||
 The Circus, 1891 8. |
In 1886 Seurat met a young scientist, Charles Henry whose ambition of
reconciling science and art in some higher intellectual synthesis, mirrored his own
concerns. In his book ‘Cerle chromatique’(1988) Henry put forward his theory
that colour have natural and fixed emotive effects, and assigned each ‘primary’
colour a constant value. These largely metaphysical and mystical arguments greatly
interested Seurat. At this time he shifted away from recording natural phenomena and
became increasingly interested in calculating the emotional effects of his colour
harmonies in line with the synaesthesia theories of Blanc and Buadelaire. In his painting
Le Cirque(1890) the surface is treated as a graduated flux of two pairs of
complementaries, red-green, orange-blue and yellow-purple. Colour touches are also
organised in streams, which exaggerate contrast around the edge of objects giving the
whole canvas a rhythmic quality consistent with current notions of how line and colour
could blend their ‘melody’ and ‘harmony’ into an overall flux shifting
with the emotion to be expressed. Le Cirque is one of a number of
‘entertainment’ painting in which one can almost hear the rhythm of the music in
the independent movement of colour and line. The spectator is invited into the world of
the performance and is treated to an emotional and sensual experience. Seurat's stress on
the organisation of the picture plane becomes part of the content in itself. The
simplification of design, purification of rhythm, lessening of perspective and flattening
of the picture plane removes the scene from a transcription of nature towards the
direction of the symbol.
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2 Seurat, Oil on canvas, 81 x 120, Art Institute of Chicago, Helen Birch Bartlett Collection Downloaded from
www.artchive.com3.Rood 'Modern Chromatic', 1879, quoted in smith p.28
4. Blanc-1864 ‘Eugene Delacroix’, Gazette des Beaux-Arts, xvi, January, quoted in Smith p.30
5.Detail from 'La Grande Jatte' scanned from Smith p.36
6.Signac(1863-1935) in his book ‘D’Eugene Delacroix au neo-impressionisme’ (1899),pp.30-36 in Art in Theory 1900-1990, Harrison and Woods(eds)
7.Feneon F.' Le neo-impressionnisme’, L’Art modern, May 1887, reprinted in Halperin, 1970 quoted in Smith p.32
8.The Circus, 1891,Oil on canvas,73 x 59 1/8, Musee d'Orsay, Paris. Downloaded from 'The Artchive'-www.artchive.com