Georges Seurat

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France ( 1859 - 1891 ) - Artworks Wikipedia® - Georges Seurat

Auction House:
Christie's / Nov 7, 2012
Estimate:€190,577.83 - €266,808.96
Price:€679,855.90

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Artworks in Arcadja

Some works of Georges Seurat

Extracted between 97 works in the catalog of Arcadja

Georges Seurat - La Source, D'après Ingres

Original 1878

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Price:

Auction: Christie's - May 9, 2013- New York

Lot number: 109
Other WORKS AT AUCTIONDescription:

Lot Description Georges Seurat (1859-1891) La Source, d'après Ingres pencil on paper 15¾ x 9¼ in. (40 x 23.5 cm.) Drawn circa 1878 Provenance Emile Seurat, Paris. Anon. sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 13 March 1939, lot 41. Józef Pankiewicz, Marseille (by 1940). John Rewald, New York. M. Knoedler & Co., Inc., New York. Racolin Foundation, New York; sale, Christie's, New York, 8 May 2000, lot 4. Acquired at the above sale by the present owner. Pre-Lot Text Property from a Private California Collection Literature A. Basler, "Le problème de la forme depuis Cézanne," L'Amour de l'Art, September 1930, p. 362 (illustrated). R. Rey, La Renaissance du Sentiment Classique dans la peinture française à la fin du XIXe siècle--Degas...Seurat, Paris, 1931 (illustrated, pl. 26). J. Rewald, Georges Seurat, New York, 1946, p. 2 (illustrated, p. 4, pl. 6). J. Rewald, Seurat, Paris, 1948, p. 23 (illustrated). P. Bonnet, "Seurat et le Néo-Impressionnisme," Le Crocodile, Bulletin de l'Association Générale de l'Internat des Hospices Civils de Lyon, vol. 4, October-December 1957, p. 8. C.M. de Hauke, Seurat et son oeuvre, Paris, 1961, vol. II, p. 30, no. 313 (illustrated, p. 31; with incorrect dimensions).

Georges Seurat - Femme Debout, La Tête Nue

Original 1882

Estimate:

Price: Not disclosed

Auction: Christie's - Dec 12, 2012- Paris

Lot number: 435
Other WORKS AT AUCTIONDescription:

Lot Description Georges Seurat (1859-1891) Femme debout, la tête nue crayon Conté sur papier 31.3 x 22.2 cm. (12 3/8 x 8¾ in.) Exécuté vers 1882 Provenance Madame Olivier Sainsère (avant 1961). Galerie Schmit, Paris. Pierre Berès, Paris. Literature C.M. De Hauke, Seurat et son oeuvre, Paris, 1961, vol. II, p. 102, no. 505 (illustré, p. 103). Exhibited Bielefeld, Kunsthalle et Baden-Baden, Staatliche Kunsthalle, Georges Seurat - Zeinchnungen, octobre 1983-mars 1984, p. 184, no. 31 (illustré). New-York, The Museum of Modern Art, Georges Seurat: the drawings, octobre 2007-janvier 2008, p. 252, no. 81, (illustré, p. 150). Post-Lot Text 'Femme debout, la tête nue'; Conté Crayon on paper. View Lot Notes ›

Georges Seurat - La Source, D'après Ingres

Original 1878

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Auction: Christie's - Nov 8, 2012- New York

Lot number: 105
Other WORKS AT AUCTIONDescription:

Lot Description Georges Seurat (1859-1891) La Source, d'après Ingres pencil on paper 15¾ x 9¼ in. (40 x 23.5 cm.) Drawn circa 1878 Provenance Emile Seurat, Paris. Anon. sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 13 March 1939, lot 41. Józef Pankiewicz, Marseille (by 1940). John Rewald, New York. M. Knoedler & Co., Inc., New York. Racolin Foundation, New York; sale, Christie's, New York, 8 May 2000, lot 4. Acquired at the above sale by the present owner. Pre-Lot Text Property from a Private California Collection Literature A. Basler, "Le problème de la forme depuis Cézanne," L'Amour de l'Art, September 1930, p. 362 (illustrated). R. Rey, La Renaissance du Sentiment Classique dans la peinture française à la fin du XIXe siècle--Degas...Seurat, Paris, 1931 (illustrated, pl. 26). J. Rewald, Georges Seurat, New York, 1946, p. 2, pl. 6 (illustrated, p. 4). J. Rewald, Seurat, Paris, 1948, p. 23 (illustrated, p. 23). P. Bonnet, "Seurat et le Néo-Impressionnisme," Le Crocodile, Bulletin de l'Association Générale de l'Internat des Hospices Civils de Lyon, vol. 4, October-December 1957, p. 8. C.M. de Hauke, Seurat et son oeuvre, Paris, 1961, vol. II, p. 30, no. 313 (illustrated, p. 31; with incorrect dimensions).

Georges Seurat - Régates

Original 1890

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Auction: Christie's - Nov 7, 2012- New York

Lot number: 11
Other WORKS AT AUCTIONDescription:

Lot Description Georges Seurat (1859-1891) Régates (Deux bateaux à voiles) black Conté crayon on paper 9¾ x 12¼ in. (24.8 x 31.1 cm.) Drawn circa 1890 Provenance Maurice Denis, Saint-Germain-en-Laye. Anne-Marie Follain-Dinès, Paris (by descent from the above, by 1943). Paul Rosenberg & Co., New York. Acquired from the above by the late owners, February 1964. Pre-Lot Text Property of a Distinguished American Collection Literature R.L. Herbert, "Seurat in Chicago and New York" in The Burlington Magazine, May 1958, pp. 148-149 (illustrated, fig. 6). C.M. de Hauke, Seurat et son oeuvre, Paris, 1961, vol. II, p. 292, no. 704 (illustrated, p. 293). R.L. Herbert, Seurat's Drawings, New York, 1962, p. 156 (illustrated, fig. 136). Exhibited Paris, Musée Jacquemart-André, Exposition Seurat, November-December 1957, no. 41. The Art Institute of Chicago and New York, The Museum of Modern Art, Seurat, Paintings and Drawings, January-May 1958, no. 150 (illustrated). View Lot Notes › "It is impossible to find a more beautiful seascape drawing in the entire nineteenth century," Robert Herbert has declared of Régates (Deux bateaux à voiles); elsewhere, he describes it simply and emphatically as "breathtaking" (op. cit., 1958, p. 149; 1962, p. 156). Dated to 1890, the year before Seurat's untimely death, the drawing is among his last independent works on paper and represents a culmination of his pioneering work as a draughtsman. As always, Seurat worked in deep, black Conté crayon on thick, textured Michallet paper, stroking the crayon across the sheet's ridges to create a range of shades from the palest gray to impenetrable darkness. Abandoning the contour line of his training, Seurat defined his shapes merely by contrasting areas of light and dark, depicting two sailboats (one of them silhouetted against a distant hill) skimming across the surface of the water toward a dock at the far right. The repeated vertical accents on the dock seem to halt the gentle forward motion of the boats, while the bent rudder-arm in the right foreground pulls our eye off to that side, countering the strong attraction of the two sails. Although the forms are all flat against the surface of the paper, with no receding diagonals, the changing value of the water results in a remarkable effect of depth, while the white of the paper flickers through the varied density of line, producing the impression of pervasive, radiant light. Exactly where this luminous drawing was executed remains uncertain. Since 1885, Seurat had worked each summer on the Channel Coast, seeking "to wash the studio light from his eyes and transcribe most exactly the vivid outdoor clarity in all its nuances," as he told Emile Verhaeren (quoted in J. Rewald, Seurat, New York, 1990, p. 189). In 1890, he traveled to Gravelines, a flourishing port near the Belgian border, where he produced four major paintings, six oil sketches, and at least eight drawings, all depicting the canalized estuary that linked the town with the sea (de Hauke, nos. 201-210, 696-703). Although it is tempting to place the present drawing in this final seaside campaign, it is probably inaccurate to do so. First, Gravelines is situated on a broad coastal plain marked only by low dunes, with no undulating hills like we see here. Moreover, the eight drawings that can be securely linked to the Gravelines sojourn all appear to be preparatory sketches for the oil paintings. The present example, in contrast, is more similar in style and technique to Seurat's drawings from the first part of the decade, which were conceived as independent works. Herbert has explained, "Two Sailboats is closer to his earlier style, with its denser and more even tones; the parallel strokes on the water and the translucent greys identify it as a late drawing, however" (op. cit., 1962, p. 156). The present image should probably be associated instead with a pair of elaborately worked drawings from 1890 that depict sailboats on the Seine in the western suburbs of Paris (de Hauke, nos. 705-706). In both of these, the sails are rendered in white, as here, and not black, as in the drawings from Gravelines. John Russell has written, "What turned out to be Seurat's last group of independent drawings had to do with that favorite motif of his: the white sail in the middle distance" (Seurat, London, 1965, p. 259). One of these drawings has been identified as a representation of a regatta at the celebrated bathing spot of La Grenouillère, just a few miles downstream from the site of Seurat's first two major exhibition pictures, Un Baignade, Asnières (de Hauke, no. 92) and Un dimanche à la Grande Jatte (de Hauke, no. 162). Although Herbert uses the neutral title Deux bateaux à voiles for the present drawing, de Hauke refers to it as Régates, suggesting that it too forms part of this milieu of bourgeois leisure (notably, a theme in which Seurat showed almost no interest during his coastal campaigns). But if the site and subject of the present drawing links it to Seurat's representations of the suburbs, the overall mood is wholly in keeping with that of his seascapes--silent, still, and utterly serene. The first owner of the present drawing was the artist and theorist Maurice Denis, who also owned an oil sketch for Un Baignade, Asnières (de Hauke, no. 82). A decade Seurat's junior, Denis experimented with the older artist's pointillist touch in his work of 1890-1891, examples of which were exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants in 1891 alongside Seurat's own seascapes from Gravelines. Although Denis would soon abandon this technique, he continued to hold Seurat in great esteem, writing in 1905, "Seurat was the first to try to replace a more or less fanciful improvisation, after nature, by a reflective working method. He sought to instill order, to create the new doctrine for which the whole world was waiting" (quoted in Maurice Denis, 1870-1943, exh. cat., Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon, 1994, p. 116).

Georges Seurat - Paysan Travaillant

Original 1883

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Auction: Christie's - Nov 1, 2011- New York

Lot number: 21
Other WORKS AT AUCTIONDescription:

Lot Description Georges Seurat (1859-1891) Paysan travaillant oil on panel 6¼ x 9 7/8 in. (16 x 25 cm.) Painted in 1882-1883 Provenance Estate of the artist (inventory no. 43 inscribed by Maximilien Luce on the reverse of the panel). Mme Alexis-Antoine Chevallot (the artist's aunt), Aube (by descent from above). Gustave Chevallot, Dampierre (by descent from above). Mme Masson, Dampierre (by descent from above). Mme Gerbier, Dampierre (by descent from above). Mme Ricard, Dampierre (by descent from above). Richard Wildenstein, Paris (by descent from above, circa 1982). Arnold and Ann Gumowitz, New York. Private collection, France. Acquired from the above by the present owner. Literature D. Wildenstein, Seurat, Paris, 1982, pp. 20 and 49 (illustrated in color). J. Rewald, Seurat, New York, 1990, p. 40 (illustrated). Exhibited Toronto, Art Gallery of Ontario, Puvis de Chavannes and the Modern Tradition, October-November 1975, no. 46 (illustrated). Kunsthaus Zurich, Georges Seurat: Figure in Space, October 2009-September 2010, p. 45, no. 21 (illustrated in color). View Lot Notes › From the moment Seurat set out on his own to learn the techniques, skills and theories of painting, he took a systematic approach to discovery that would characterize his aims and methods as an artist for the rest of his career. The subtle qualities of observation and analysis that Seurat reveals in Paysan travaillant, and other landscapes and rural figure paintings executed in 1882-1883, already announce that this talented and perceptive young painter was embarking on a brilliant enterprise, which, as fate would have it, would last less than a decade before being sadly cut short. Seurat learned quickly and well, and with the completion of La Grande Jatte, his magnum opus, in 1885--at the age on only 25--he had become a genuine innovator, an influential player in the development of modern art. Old Pissarro, whose selfless example and dedication to the new art had already inspired many a younger painter, came to study and apply Seurat's findings to his own work. Seurat had moreover quickly achieved a distinctive maturity in his now famous and well-appreciated drawings, which has tended to distract attention from the artist's accomplishments in the quickening evolution of his early paintings. He advanced these twin sides to his work, in black-and-white and color, in tandem at a prodigious pace, as if the young artist sensed that he had no time to lose. Classes at the Ecole de Beaux-Arts in Paris held Seurat's interest for less than two years, and while he had shown skill in drawing the figure, he failed to place in the academy's annual competitions. When he returned to Paris in November 1880 following his year of obligatory military service, he was keen to begin painting in oils and using color. He moreover believed it to be essential that he work outdoors, en plein air, just as the more progressive artists of his time had been doing--the Impressionists, and before them, the Barbizon painters. A fervent admirer of Delacroix, Seurat took a strong interest in color theory, and purchased a copy of Ogden Rood's Théorie scientifique des couleurs, the French translation of the Columbia University professor's Modern Chromatics, which had been recently published as a title in an everyman's line of science books. Seurat's earliest rural landscapes were made during the summer and fall of 1881 while staying with his friend Aman-Jean in Pontaubert, in the Yonne region. A year later Seurat again worked sur le motif while on outings in the Fontainebleau forest, in the vicinity of Barbizon, the community which gave its name to the colony of pioneering plein-air landscape painters of an earlier generation, including Corot, Rousseau, Daubigny, Harpignies and Diaz. During the period prior to 1884, the year in which he completed Une Baignade, Asnières, his first major work, Seurat produced about twenty oil paintings on canvas and another seventy on small wood panels, among them Paysan travaillant, which depict both pure landscapes (Hauke, no. 51; fig. 1), and studies of figures seen in a landscape setting, peasants working chores in the fields (Hauke, no. 58; fig. 2), and stonebreakers wielding hammers as they cleared fields for ploughing (Hauke, no. 33; fig. 3). Seurat's sudden focus on these agrarian subjects is a development unique to this period; he did not return to them later on, as he subsequently became known instead as a painter of Parisian and suburban themes, and in his landscapes, the Channel ports. The many studies of farm folk and laborers did not result in a major large composition as a summation, as in the cases of La Baignade and La Grande Jatte, each of which had been preceded by numerous studies on panel. Seurat's interest in rural labor stemmed mainly from the young painter's need to work through what he considered to be the useful legacies of earlier trends in painting, as he examined the work of the Realists, Barbizon painters and his own contemporaries, the Impressionists. In this way Seurat quickly recapitulated in his own work the path to modernism in painting. Courbet's iconic, revolutionary Les casseurs de pierres, 1850 (Dresden, Gemäldegalerie; destroyed in World War II) was especially relevant in this context. Seurat--like the Dutchman Van Gogh, whom he would later befriend--was also drawn to the popular art of Millet, celebrated for the artist's dedication to the lives and work of ordinary rural people. It is likely that Seurat knew the major biography of Millet that Alfred Sensier published in 1881. A reproduction of a Millet drawing for a peasant girl who appears in The Harvesters, 1849, was found after Seurat's death in a folio in which he had collected various popular printed images and art reproductions, and several Seurat drawings have been linked to sources in Millet's oeuvre. Among Seurat's older contemporaries, the farm and field figure paintings of Pissarro provided an instructive example of how rural life could be presented in the latest techniques of the Impressionist painters, a movement then less than a decade old. John Leighton and Richard Thomson have written: "Thus a tendency to sombre naturalism was superseded by a more vigorous touch and a more sophisticated handling of colour as he began to study the chromatic adventures of Monet and his contemporaries." They go on to point out, however, that "This might be useful as a general description of the pattern of Seurat's development in the early 1880s, but only a few of his panels can be dated with any certainty and their experimental quality tends to foil any attempt to place them in a logical chronological sequence. Seurat could be flexible in his approach, trying out different methods of brushwork and colour and adopting the style that best suited his subject" (Seurat and the Bathers, exh. cat., The National Gallery, London, 1997, p. 36). By the time Seurat painted Paysan travaillant, he could already lay claim a very accomplished and distinctive style of drawing, which he had developed soon after leaving the Ecole, having cast aside the classical contours, carefully delineated chiaroscuro and the conventional themes of his academic training. Aman-Jean later stated, "It's drawing, thoroughly understood, that put Seurat on the right path" (quoted in R. L. Herbert, et al., Georges Seurat, exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1991, p. 377). During this early phase in his career Seurat drew incessantly, quickly filling pocket-sized sketchbooks he carried everywhere he went, drawing the figures of people in the casual, naturalistic poses in which he encountered them. Back in the studio he was already realizing on larger sheets the nearly mature manner for which he is best-known, in which he rendered forms by means of densely hatched contrasts of light and shade, abstracting and simplifying his forms, placing strongly characterized silhouettes against the light, or conversely, glowing forms against a dark ground (fig. 4). He translated these effects into color as he worked on the panel paintings. "What one should see in painting, or rather what I look for," Seurat stated, "is the form, the whole, the value of the tone; colour for me comes afterwards" (quoted in J. Halperin, ed., Georges Seurat: Oeuvres plus que complets, Geneva, 1970, p. 29). The panels on which Seurat liked to paint outdoors were durable and extremely convenient--a small supply of them would fit easily in hand-held painting box, called a boîte à pouce. Seurat usually painted his panel pictures au premier coupe, often in a single sitting before the motif, while the larger canvases might have been begun on site and were finished during later sessions in Seurat's Paris studio. Paysan travaillant exhibits a lively, finely worked surface, consisting of small squarish and feathery touches, meticulously applied, in which Seurat worked from dark to lighter tones, building up the paint film thin layer upon layer, angling each stroke over the previous ones to create an irregular but discernible crisscross weave, a gossamer surface that reveals the artist's acutely sensitive response to color and light. It is already clear that Seurat would become a colorist who would eschew bold, brushy effects--such as those of Monet--in preference for a delicate, lustrous and finely nuanced surface, in which color interaction would take place in microscale. This conception would eventually result, over the course of the next several years, in Seurat's fully fledged pointillist technique. Already in evidence as well in the present painting is Seurat's preference for a basic pictorial architecture consisting of contrasting vertical forms and parallel horizontal elements: here he has offset the partly vertical figure of the peasant and his sack at right against the emphatic line of trees in the background, which creates a pronounced effect of downward stress on his bent posture. Leighton and Thomson have written: "As a group, the array of small canvases and panels that Seurat produced in the early 1880s might offer few clues to the scale of ambition that would be revealed in the Bathers. Yet each of these little studies betrays the quiet potential of Seurat's methods, and close study reveals the careful decisions and calculations that underpin even those pictures that appear to be direct and spontaneous. Perhaps his greatest achievement in these years was his mastery of colour. Seurat inherited the academic view that colour was subordinate to form, but his paintings indicate that study of this element was one of his main preoccupations" (op. cit., 1997, p. 41). Unnumbered artist photo: Georges Seurat, date and photographer unknown. Barcode: 2885007 (fig. 1) Georges Seurat, Lisière du bois au printemps, 1882-1883. Musée d'Orsay, Paris. Barcode: 28850014 (fig. 2) Georges Seurat, Le Faucheur, circa 1881. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Barcode: 29175000 (fig. 3) Georges Seurat, Casseur de pierres, circa 1882. Sold, Christie's New York, 8 November 2006, lot 12. Barcode: RF880-2 (fig. 4) Georges Seurat, Femme agenouillée, circa 1881. Sold, Christie's New York, 4 May 2011, lot 14. Barcode: 28224624