Customer center

We are a boutique essay service, not a mass production custom writing factory. Let us create a perfect paper for you today!

Example research essay topic: Landscape Painting Vertical Lines - 1,214 words

NOTE: Free essay sample provided on this page should be used for references or sample purposes only. The sample essay is available to anyone, so any direct quoting without mentioning the source will be considered plagiarism by schools, colleges and universities that use plagiarism detection software. To get a completely brand-new, plagiarism-free essay, please use our essay writing service.
One click instant price quote

Georges Seurat painted A Sunday on La Grande Jatte on canvas with oil pigments in 1844. In his work the artist used the pointillism approach and the use of color to make his painting be as lifelike as possible. Seurat worked two years on this painting, preparing it with at least twenty drawings and forty color sketched. In these preliminary drawings he analyzed, in detail every color relationship and every aspect of pictorial space.

La Grande Jatte was like an experiment that involved perspective depth, the broad landscape planes of color and light, and the way shadows were used. Everything tends to come back to the surface of the picture, to emphasize and reiterate the two-dimensional plane of which it was painted on. Also important worth mentioning is the way Seurat used and created the figures in the painting. The subject of the painting is an island newly adopted by the Parisian middle class as a place for quiet Sunday gatherings.

The painting looks very realistic. The figures and the way they are dressed look lifelike as does the beautiful landscape in the background. The colors and the painting style, pointillism, make this painting very realistic. The question is, how does Seurat go about making the painting look so lifelike?

Pointillism was a major reason in why Seurat's painting looks so lifelike. During the painting of La Grande Jatte, Seurat simplified his brushwork to such an extent that his painting seems to be composed of nothing but tiny, more or less circular dots. Seurat's experiments with color led him to paint in small dots of color, which are arranged in such combinations that they seem to vibrate. Individual colors tend to interact with those around them and fuse in the eye of the viewer. This approach is not unlike the dots or pixels in a computer image. If you magnify any computer image sufficiently, you will see individual colors that, when set together, produce an image.

Seurat was interested in the way colors came about. With the enhancement of the luminosity of colors made possible by the investigation of scientific optics, he saw positive merit in a method in which the movement of the brush no longer demanded the slightest skill: Here the hand is, in effect, useless, deceit impossible; no room for bravura items; let the hand be awkward, but let the eye be agile, perspective and skilled. There is a mysterious vibration when one views La Grande Jatte. There is an effect of the paintings surface when ones eye glides inevitably from dot to dot.

This lets the eyes carry from the people located in the foreground to the beautiful landscape in the background. However, the actual charm of pointillism in the awareness with which the colors can be seen, precisely because they do not merge unconsciously on the retina. That is why La Grande Jatte, seen at close range, appears more interesting in color than from a distance. Clearly Seurat was particularly concerned with the coloring of the painting. The landscape was something that Seurat concentrated hardly on.

Before the final painting, he made a large canvas painting of the landscape without people. The shadow zones are dark, blue-green, and almost turquoise. Originally this picture was executed in small strokes, laid over each other in cross-hatching's. Later, however, it was reworked in many places in the pointillist techniques. Contemporary critics, who certainly recognized a certain distance from impressionism in the work, hardly noticed how highly composed the landscape was.

Seurat reduced this landscape to the broader format of the oil sketches. It was therefore made after the landscape painting. At the back on the Seine we see a streamer that was later retained, but which is not yet to be seen in the landscape painting. Seurat had thought long and hard about how to make the relation in sizes clear by introducing a dog previously drawn from nature. The dog will remain the only creature in the painting, apart from the pug and the monkey, which were there for spatial depth. Once the landscape was finally fixed Seurat had great difficulty filling it with people.

This was more important in the painting than the depth or surface pattern. He wanted to create a magical atmosphere that the artist was able to create from the abstract patterns of contemporary bourgeois Parisians. Seurat's figures are like ones of a mystery and of isolation one from another. However, he was meticulous with them in trying to make them as lifelike as possible. Seurat constantly changes the drawings to make them appear realistic. The shadows of the figures are very carefully modeled.

The light-dark contrasts of the shadows make them seem actually real. The spatial quality is only established through the relations between the sizes of the objects. The painting is not based on a geometrical, box like space. The perspective centre is on the right, despite the fact that the composition is laid in rows parallel to the picture frame. At the same time a paradoxical foreshortening from right to left is evident. The girl fishing with the orange dress and her mother are on the same level, that is, actually at equal distance.

In its spatial contruction, the painting is also a successful construction, the groups of people sitting in the shade, and who should really be seen from above, are all shown directly from the side. The ideal eye level would actually be on different horizontal lines; first at head height of the standing figures, then of those seated. The asymmetric balance of the picture is appealing to the viewer very much. Used to see the things perfectly balanced in the nature, the eye seems to enjoy the work of Seurat. The proportions of figures, and unity created by intersecting horizontal and vertical lines are unnaturally attractive.

All of figures in this painting are placed in each area based on horizontal lines and vertical lines scientifically. Seated and reclining figures are based on the horizontal and the standing figures are based on the vertical lines. And the most significant line is the diagonal of shore. It begins from the left corner near the bottom. It makes our eyes reach to a vanishing point, which is at the upper right corner of the painting. The background of the painting is stabilized by two prolonged horizontal lines made by the opposite shore.

And rounded lines are found in parasols, in the sail of a boat, in the back of some figures. The vertical lines make armatures for com positionally significant figures, and the horizontal lines divide figures at a limited number of anatomical points: the top of the head, the neck, the waist, the knees and the feet. The eye unconsciously tries to follow some line and ends up circulating around the picture without any definite purpose. Due to this effect the painting looks much larger in size than it really is.

Seurat's methods of combing observations which he collected over two years, corresponds, in its self invented techniques, to a modern lifelike painting rather than an academic history painting. Reference: Duchting, Have. Georges Seurat. 1859 - 1891. The Master of Pointillism. Taschen, 1999. Browse, Norma.

Georges Seurat. New York: Rizzoli, 1992 Thompson, David. Georges Seurat: Point, Counterpoint. Framingham, Ma. : Home Vision, 1979


Free research essays on topics related to: seurat, vertical lines, landscape, figures, landscape painting

Research essay sample on Landscape Painting Vertical Lines

Writing service prices per page

  • $18.85 - in 14 days
  • $19.95 - in 3 days
  • $23.95 - within 48 hours
  • $26.95 - within 24 hours
  • $29.95 - within 12 hours
  • $34.95 - within 6 hours
  • $39.95 - within 3 hours
  • Calculate total price

Our guarantee

  • 100% money back guarantee
  • plagiarism-free authentic works
  • completely confidential service
  • timely revisions until completely satisfied
  • 24/7 customer support
  • payments protected by PayPal

Secure payment

With EssayChief you get

  • Strict plagiarism detection regulations
  • 300+ words per page
  • Times New Roman font 12 pts, double-spaced
  • FREE abstract, outline, bibliography
  • Money back guarantee for missed deadline
  • Round-the-clock customer support
  • Complete anonymity of all our clients
  • Custom essays
  • Writing service

EssayChief can handle your

  • essays, term papers
  • book and movie reports
  • Power Point presentations
  • annotated bibliographies
  • theses, dissertations
  • exam preparations
  • editing and proofreading of your texts
  • academic ghostwriting of any kind

Free essay samples

Browse essays by topic:

Stay with EssayChief! We offer 10% discount to all our return customers. Once you place your order you will receive an email with the password. You can use this password for unlimited period and you can share it with your friends!

Academic ghostwriting

About us

© 2002-2024 EssayChief.com