Final answer:
Georges Seurat's A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte uses a Pointillism technique, contrasting with the spontaneous brush strokes of Impressionism. This created a more structured composition with immobilized figures and well-defined forms.
Step-by-step explanation:
Comparison of Seurat's Technique with Impressionism
Georges Seurat's A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte is similar to an Impressionist painting in that it captures leisurely scenes of contemporary life and shows the effects of light and color. However, it significantly differs in the technique used. Seurat developed Pointillism, a method where tiny colored dots are applied to the canvas, which visually blend when viewed from a distance to form the image. This technique creates a more structured and controlled effect compared to the often more spontaneous and less defined brush strokes of Impressionism.
While Impressionist paintings often use quick brush strokes to capture a moment in time, Seurat's Pointillism involves painstaking application of small, systematic dots. These dots of color, when viewed collectively, create a cohesive and lifelike scene. The figures in La Grande Jatte, for example, appear immobilized and silhouetted, exhibiting a sense of order and permanence, contrary to the transient quality of Impressionist art.
Seurat's meticulous approach results in a piece where the colors are separated into touches placed side-by-side that blend in the viewer's eye, a technique he preferred to call Divisionism. The precision of Pointillism, with its well-defined lines and juxtaposition of contrasting colors, represents a substantial deviation from the Impressionist technique. This distinctive style was considered revolutionary and transformed the future of art at the end of the 19th century.