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Artwork Analysis

The Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte artwork marked a change in the

art world. The artwork captures the impressionists' style of using light and brushstrokes to paint.

People of different classes are relaxing in the public garden on La Grande Jatte island. There are

females, males, babies, and animals on the land with green grass, all going on with their leisure

activities. To the left is River Seine with boats. This essay will look at the color palette, actions,

colors used, and characters in the painting.

Seurat uses color blending techniques throughout this painting to bring out the shadows.

Seurat used a pointillism system to blend the colors by painting dots that made up the

composition he required without mixing the colors. Seurat painted the artwork in stages of three.

In the first stage, he painted earthy colors. In the second stage, he painted the dots; during the

third stage, he added the border of the painting and the final touches. In the past, shadows used to

be illustrated using black color. Seurat uses his system of pointillism to identify shadows of

figures by the color they are associated with. For instance, women's skirts project a blue shadow,

unlike the traditional way where shadows are black. The shadow comes into contact with the

color green, which provides the blue color within its proximity of colors. When the light comes

into contact with green color, a yellow halo is cast for the trees. To achieve sunlight outcome,
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Sauret uses the yellow zinc pigment (Jones). These color pigments are evident next to the woman

who appears to be knitting.

The painting shows characters arranged in groups. At first look, viewers will see people

and animals in a park, and nothing seems out of the ordinary until they have a closer look. The

painting shows people of different social classes in the same hangout but not interacting. the

painter could be criticizing how people of modernized Paris are socially isolated. The people in

the painting are very fashionable and relaxed in the afternoon. The painting features men,

females, and babies. The standing lady with a monkey as a pet identifies her as a prostitute. The

painting has animals such as dogs, monkeys, and a butterfly. At the center is a girl dressed in

white looking at the viewer. In the bottom left is a rough-looking man smoking a pipe beside a

family (Jones). In the middle, a big girl is seated next to her mother.

Various activities take place in the painting. Parisians went to La Grande Jatte on Sunday

afternoon, away from the sun in the city, to relax. Near the river, there is a lady fishing, a French

metaphor for a prostitute. The painting has a man playing his trumpet, and two soldiers are

walking by next to him. In the middle, a girl is running, the only lively one there. In the river, a

woman is being rowed in a boat by four men (Jones). There is a big dog near the small dog and

the monkey sniffing at something on the ground.

Seurat introduced something new to the art world, different from what the impressionist

had seen before. He was referred to as the “confetti painter” due to his unique way of painting.

He painted the artwork for years to become a masterpiece.

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Works Cited

Jones, Christopher P. “How to Read Paintings: A Sunday Afternoon On La Grande Jatte by

Georges Seurat.” Medium, 7 Apr. 2021, https://christopherpjones.medium.com/how-to-

read-paintings-a-sunday-afternoon-on-la-grande-jatte-by-georges-seurat-125ec9b61493.