Seurat is today best remembered as the inventor of Neo-Impressionism, a famous technique that used tiny dabs of contrasting color to create continuous images. This study—one of eight he devoted to the punishing labor of stone breakers—precedes Seurat’s revolutionary new manner by several years but already indicates his departure from the high Impressionist style. Picked out with short strokes of contrasting color, a pile of stones at the center of the composition appears convincingly pulverized, broken down from masses into particles, from form into color.
Details
- Artist Name: Georges-Pierre Seurat (French, 1859-1891)
- Title: The Stone Breakers, Le Raincy
- Date: c. 1882
- Medium: Oil on canvas
- Dimensions: 14-3/4 x 17-7/8 in. (37.5 x 45.4 cm)
- Credit Line: Norton Simon Art Foundation
- Accession Number: M.1968.28.P
- Copyright: © Norton Simon Art Foundation
Object Information
Léopold Appert, Paris, by descent to;
Mme. Vve. Léopold Appert, Paris.
[?]Jacques and Pierre Puybonnieux, Paris, in 1934 – still in 1952[?]
Private collection, Paris, in 1958.
[Stephen Hahn Gallery, New York, 1968 to];
Norton Simon Art Foundation.
Retrospective Georges Seurat
- Paris, Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, 1908-12-14 to 1909-01-09
- Georges Seurat 1859-1891,under cat. 20 p. 38
- Minervino, F., Tout l'oeuvre peint de Seurat, pp. 93-94
- Masterpieces from the Norton Simon Museum,1989, p. 161
- Tilston, R., Seurat, pp. 38-39
- Steadman, David W., Art Journal,fig. 10 pp. 34-40
- Laprade, Jacques de, Georges Seurat,pl. 3
- Zimmermann, M., Seurat and the Art Theory of His Time,fig. 135 pp. 14, 92
- Steadman, David W., University: A Princeton Quarterly,no. 57
- Laprade, Jacques de, Seurat,pl. 10
- Brettell, Richard R. and Stephen F. Eisenman, Nineteenth-Century Art in the Norton Simon Museum, volume 1,2006,
- Alexandrian, Seurat, p. 13
- Rewald, John; and Henri Dorra, Seurat: l'oeuvre peint, biographie et catalogue critique,no. 21
- Campbell, Sara, Collector Without Walls: Norton Simon and His Hunt for the Best,2010, cat. 524 p. 308
- Rewald, John, Seurat: A Biography, p. 34
- de Hauke, Cesar, Seurat et son oeuvre,no. 38
- Distel, Anne, Seurat,no. 8 p. 150
- Courthion, Pierre, Seurat, p. 21
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