Art at Hosmer: Arts Around the World: French Pointillist Paintings Inspired by Seurat

The third country on our Arts Around the World journey this year is France. We began by learning about France and French artist, Claude Monet. Monet began the Impressionist art movement and we made paintings inspired by his many paintings of a bridge over a pond of waterlilies in his garden in Giverny.

Georges Seurat, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (1884-86)

For our next project based on a French artist, we looked at the work of Georges Seurat. We looked at Seurat's painting, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, and noticed that many people were out in a park, sitting and standing on the grass and boating in the water. We also noticed that it was hard to see details on the people's faces and when you look closely at the trees and water, especially, they look very soft and seem to be made up of smaller dots or brushstrokes.

A detail from Seurat's Circus Sideshow (1887-88)

Georges Seurat was born in Paris in 1859 and studied to be an artist. Seurat and painter friend, Paul Signac, developed a technique of painting called Pointillism. Pointillism uses small, distinct dots of color to form an image. The eye and mind of the viewer have to blend the dots to form new colors and see the image all together. This is actually similar to the way computer screens work today -- the pixels in the computer screen are like the dots in a Pointillist painting. Pointillism took longer than the quick brushstrokes that we learned about with Impressionism, since it involves making so many dots. A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte took Seurat two years!

Georges Seurat, La Seine à la Grande-Jatte (1888)

We looked at several examples of Seurat and Signac's Pointillist paintings and noticed that they liked to paint landscapes, especially with water. We drew our own landscapes, inspired by the paintings we saw. Two of the second grade classes looked at the painting above by Seurat, La Seine à la Grande-Jatte, which features the Seine River that runs through Paris. We noticed that the landscape featured a river, grass, trees and sky, so we included those elements in our own landscapes. Some students added buildings, clouds or a boat, as optional details.

Paul Signac, The Port, Red Sunset (1906)

The other two second grade classes looked at the painting above by Paul Signac, The Port, Red Sunset, and drew a sunset scene with water and sky and a setting sun. We felt it was rather simple to draw, but knew that it would be important to mix different color dots together to give the impression of a sunset and that would take more time.

The following class, students began painting their Pointillist landscapes using cotton swabs to create the dots! We dipped the end of the cotton swab into paint and pressed it onto the paper to create the dots, repeating this motion several times until we filled up an area. We tried to use different colors in the same area, the way Seurat and Signac did.

While we were creating the dots we listened to Claude Debussy's Clair De Lune and a few more of his compositions since we have been learning about him in music. One student noticed that he shares the same first name as Claude Monet!

Although the painting part took much longer than when we made our Impressionist inspired artwork, many students enjoyed the repetitive nature of dotting with the cotton swabs! Students who finished their Pointillist landscape paintings early were able to make their own Pointillist paintings with subjects and designs of their choice. Also, during spring break, one of our 2nd grade artists found an example of Pointillism at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston: