Seurat by Forty Sandra

Author:Forty, Sandra [FORTY, SANDRA]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781844062959
Publisher: TAJ Books International

Portrait of Edmond-François Aman-Jean, 1882-83, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 62.2 x 47.7 cm

In 1887 Seurat painted La Parade de Cirque (Circus Sideshow), a shadowy nocturnal scene of circus promoters hustling for customers, based on his sketches of Ferdinand Corvi’s travelling circus when it pitched up near the Place de la Nation in a working class district of Paris. The painting was shown at the 1888 Salon des Indépendants.

Seurat enjoyed the nightlife of Paris and was a regular at the music hall venues of Gaite Rochechouart and Eden Concerts. His circle of friends included a group of Paris-based Symbolist writers and artists, but their rather strange company worried his established friends, Signac and Pissarro, who feared the Symbolists were hijacking his work away from his past focus on optical investigations. His new paintings began to lose the bright vibrancy of his earlier works to be replaced by a more muted palette. In the last year of his life Seurat became more withdrawn and hardly saw even his closest friends. He seemed to have become completely absorbed by his art. It was noted, however, that he became very upset when he learned of his friend van Gogh’s suicide in July 1890 and then the death from smallpox of another friend and follower, Dubois-Pillet, in August.

Seurat was a very private man and kept his mistress, Madeleine Knoblock, a secret from even his closest friends. He had met her in 1889 when he was almost 30 years old after exhibiting at the Salon des Vingt in Brussels, Belgium. They met again on his return. She was a 20-year-old model. They soon became lovers and started living in secret together. Seurat gave up his apartment and moved to quieter but smaller rooms nearby in a courtyard off the Passage de L’Elysee-des- Beaux Arts. On February 16, 1890, she gave birth in the studio to their son, without even the knowledge of his family or close friends. They called the new baby Pierre Georges Seurat.

Madeleine became pregnant again with a baby boy at the beginning of the following year. Friends only learned of her existence after Seurat’s sudden death in 1891. She had been the model for Young Woman Powdering Herself, a painting he gave to her. He had originally painted his own portrait in the mirror behind her head, but when his friends told him that it looked ridiculous he overpainted it with a pot of flowers.

In 1890 Seurat unveiled Le Chahut, a vibrant painting showing Parisian cancan dancers in a cabaret scene. Seurat used a geometric grid to work out the precise diagonal lines of the girls legs. It was not well received critically and derided for being too wooden and contrived.

In spring 1991 Seurat was working long hours on another large canvas for a painting entitled Le Cirque (The Circus) often working long into the night. Signac noted that in his artistic fervor Seurat barely ate, perhaps just a croissant and chocolate bar for lunch, and worked nonstop. His style was evolving and

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