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 :. | Impression Figure | Fisherman | The Grand Jatte of Sunday afternoon | en eftermiddag pa la grande jatte | Piling Farmer |
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Bartholomeus Spranger
1546-1611 Flemish Bartholomeus Spranger Gallery Bartholomeus (Bartholomaeus) Spranger (21 March 1546??August 1611) was a Flemish Mannerist painter, draughtsman, and etcher. He was born in Antwerp. In 1565, he traveled to Paris and Italy after finishing his studies. He worked on wall paintings in various churches. At Rome, Pope Pius V appointed him court painter in 1570. In 1581 he was appointed to the Prague court of Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor. Hendrik Goltzius made engravings of his paintings, thus increasing Spranger's fame. Spranger's Mannerist paintings depict nudes in various complex poses. He died in Prague.
Gerbrand van den Eeckhout
1621-1674 Dutch Gerbrand van den Eeckhout Location Dutch painter, draughtsman and etcher. He was the son of the goldsmith Jan Pietersz. van den Eeckhout and a great friend as well as a pupil of Rembrandt, according to Houbraken, who commented that van den Eeckhout painted in the style of his master throughout his career. This is certainly true of van den Eeckhout (biblical) history paintings, but less so of either his portraits, which gradually displayed more Flemish elegance, or his genre pieces (from 1650), in which he followed various trends; he adapted his style to suit his subject with sensitive versatility. He was also a gifted colourist and an artist of great imagination, superior in both these respects to such better-known Rembrandt pupils as Ferdinand Bol and Nicolaes Maes. Moreover, he was extremely productive, and there is at least one dated painting for virtually every year between 1641 and 1674. In addition, he created a large body of drawings comprising histories, figures, landscapes and genre scenes executed in various media, including watercolour. He also made several etchings, mostly studies of heads, such as the Self-portrait (1646; B. 66). He died a bachelor, aged 53.
Frank Newbould
British Poster designer, 1887-1951