Georges Seurat

Georges Seurat was a French painter who founded a new, scientific approach to Impressionism. Born in Paris in 1859, he developed a technique known as Pointillism, building his images from countless tiny dots of pure color that blend together in the viewer's eye. He applied this painstaking method to a huge canvas of Parisians relaxing on an island in the Seine, one of the most famous paintings in the world.

He studied theories of color and vision closely and worked slowly, planning his compositions with great care. His calm, carefully ordered scenes have a still, almost frozen dignity. Seurat died suddenly in 1891 at just thirty one, but his innovations pushed art toward new ways of thinking about color and helped open the door to modern painting.