Sun

This painting was Seurat’s most famous and well received
paintings. For this painting he did a vast amount of sketches and
preparatory drawings. One of Seurat’s final sketches was this
same image without any figures, he did this because he wanted
to depict the landscape setting of the island in his painting.
When in actual fact the Island containing drinking and dinning
establishments along side a ship builders yard.
Seurat painted this painting with a bored of red
and blue, contrasting colours. The colour variation
of the border changes as you go around the
painting because Seurat wanted to achieve the
best contrast at every point on this painting.
When Seurat was sketching designs for this
painting he changed the amount of figures
numerous times. He started off with five figures
sat in the bottom left hand corner in the shade,
however he later changed in to three.
When Seurat painted this image in his studio an artist and a
friend Paul Signac said the canvas was too large for the image.
This is said to be why Seurat’s figures are out of proportion and
perspective. The figures fit slightly better if you viewer the
painting diagonally while standing to the right hand side of it.
Seurat’s pointillism
technique can be clearly
seen in this painting with
the use of tiny little dots.
Seurat actually finished
this painting in 1885, but
then later that year he
decided to go back to it
and add all the little dots.
This technique is to allow
the viewers eyes to do
the mixing rather than
mixing it on the canvas.