French Pointillist Painter, 1859-1891 Georges-Pierre Seurat (2 December 1859 ?C 29 March 1891) was a French painter and draftsman. His large work Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, his most famous painting, altered the direction of modern art by initiating Neo-impressionism, and is one of the icons of 19th century painting Seurat took to heart the color theorists' notion of a scientific approach to painting. Seurat believed that a painter could use color to create harmony and emotion in art in the same way that a musician uses counterpoint and variation to create harmony in music. Seurat theorized that the scientific application of color was like any other natural law, and he was driven to prove this conjecture. He thought that the knowledge of perception and optical laws could be used to create a new language of art based on its own set of heuristics and he set out to show this language using lines, color intensity and color schema. Seurat called this language Chromoluminarism. His letter to Maurice Beaubourg in 1890 captures his feelings about the scientific approach to emotion and harmony. He says "Art is Harmony. Harmony is the analogy of the contrary and of similar elements of tone, of color and of line, considered according to their dominance and under the influence of light, in gay, calm or sad combinations". Seurat's theories can be summarized as follows: The emotion of gaiety can be achieved by the domination of luminous hues, by the predominance of warm colors, and by the use of lines directed upward. Calm is achieved through an equivalence/balance of the use of the light and the dark, by the balance of warm and cold colors, and by lines that are horizontal. Sadness is achieved by using dark and cold colors and by lines pointing downwards.  Related Paintings of Georges Seurat :. | The Siene at La Grande Jatte | Two Stonebreakers | Ein Abend in Grandcamp | Auf einer Wiese sitzender Knabe | The Circus |
Related Artists:
Gerard Ter Borch
1617-1681 Dutch Gerard Ter Borch Locations Gerard Ter Borch was born in Zwolle. His first teacher was his father, Gerard Ter Borch the Elder, who in his youth had spent some years in Rome and returned with drawings he had made as well as some he had collected in Italy. The son precociously revealed his gifts as a draftsman, as shown in his drawing of a man on horseback (1625). Ter Borch traveled widely. In 1634 he was in Haarlem, in 1635 in London, in 1640 probably in Rome. A visit to Spain is reflected in reminiscences of Diego Velazquez in the style and psychological penetration of Ter Borch s portraits. His famous portrait Helena van der Schalke as a Child (ca. 1644) calls to mind Velazquez s Infantas; the placement of the figure in palpable yet undefined space, without the indication of a floor line, is a masterful adoption of the Spanish masters invention. Between 1645 and 1648 Ter Borch was in Munster, Germany, where he went to seek portrait commissions during the meetings that ended the 80 years of war between the United Provinces and Spain. His small group portrait Swearing of the Oath of Ratification of the Treaty of Munster is a rare example in Dutch 17th-century painting of the recording of an actual historical event. It includes more than 50 recognizable portraits. The painter asked for this work the enormous price of 6, 000 guilders. Apparently no buyer was found, for the picture was in the hands of his widow after his death. From 1654 on Ter Borch lived mainly in Deventer, where he married, became a citizen, held honorary office, and died on Dec. 8, 1681. Ter Borch s early paintings were mainly scenes of military life, painted with great subtlety of color and values. Later he showed a predilection for small, dainty interior scenes, in which he revealed his delight in the sheen of satin and the grace of charming women. The elegance of his figures has tended to obscure the fact that in many cases they are shown as participants in situations of amatory commerce. The figures and costumes are painted with care and high finish that is not matched in the settings and backgrounds, which are often not well realized. The Music Lesson (ca. 1675) is a characteristic late example of Ter Borchs favorite subject matter. His most able pupil, Caspar Netscher, became a successful portraitist in the small-scale and fashionable tradition of his master.
Lorenzo Tiepolo
Venice 1736 -C Madrid 1776
Claude Gillot
(April 28,1673 Langres - May 4,1722 Paris) was a French painter, best known as the master of Watteau and Lancret. He had Watteau as an apprentice between 1703 and 1708. He was a painter, engraver, book illustrator, metal worker, and designer for the theater. His sportive mythological landscape pieces, with such titles as Feast of Pan and Feast of Bacchus, opened the Academy of Painting at Paris to him in 1715; and he then adapted his art to the fashionable tastes of the day, and introduced the decorative fetes champetres, in which he was afterwards surpassed by his pupils. He was also closely connected with the opera and theatre as a designer of scenery and costumes.