.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
*This lot may be exempt from sales tax as set forth in the Sales Tax Notice in the back of the catalogue.
Paul Signac declared: "These are the most beautiful painter's drawings that ever existed" (quoted in J. Russell, Seurat, London, 1965 pp. 65-66). This past winter we were treated to a delectably rewarding retrospective of Seurat's drawings at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, which included this important landscape drawing from the Hillman Family Foundation. For many, the truth of Signac's pronouncement became apparent nearly from the very start, and then deepened with repeated visits. After a room of some very early academic and Ingresque studies done during the late 1870s, and some more personal, but still tentative transitional figure drawings, viewers suddenly encountered one of the supreme masterworks of late 19th century draughtsmanship, the exquisite portrait of Aman-Jean, which Seurat drew during 1882-1883 (Hauke, no. 588; fig. 1) and sent to the 1883 Salon des Indépendants. It was the first work that he displayed before the public. In the following spring he completed and exhibited La baignade, Asnières (Hauke, no. 62; National Gallery, London) and later that year he began the the large canvas for which he became controversial in his day, and famous in ours, Un dimanche à la Grande Jatte (Hauke no. 162; The Art Institute of Chicago), which he completed in the fall of 1885 and placed in the Eighth and last Impressionist group show of 1886.
Hauke had listed the present drawing as circa 1886, too late it would seem, in light of related works (discussed below). The curators of the MoMA exhibition ascribed the Hillman drawing to circa 1882-1884. This seems right, and places this drawing squarely within that remarkable period in which Seurat quickly achieved his definitive, characteristic style. Indeed, Robert L. Herbert has noted that "in his drawings of 1881-1883 Seurat first revealed his astonishing early maturity" (in Seurat Drawings and Paintings, New Haven, 2001, p. 19), and Russell has further pointed out that "Seurat was...in his drawings the master of a fully developed and entirely original style, before he had painted a single picture that could be called his own" (op. cit., p. 84).
The hallmarks of this decisive moment, when Seurat perfected his unique and unprecedented manner of drawing, are present here: his use of deep black Conté crayon on fine Michallet laid paper, in which the horizontal chain and vertical laid lines parallel the simple geometry that Seurat discovered in this typical countryside maison carrée, or "square house." Looming silhouettes of trees frame areas of lighter half-tones; the great dark mass of the curving road in the foreground opposes the pale expanse of sky in the distance. This scene exists in an eerily still twilight; the artist's crayon has left very little area of the sheet untouched and unshaded. Jodi Hauptman described Seurat's method in her introduction to the MoMA retrospective catalogue:
"Abandoning the contour line of his training, the artist stroked the Conté crayon across the sheet's ridges, thus devising his own kind of draughtsmanship: the emphasis on dark and light tones to abstract and simplify... the layering of pigment to create a range of densities, from the translucent scrim to impenetrable darkness; the exploitation of reserve to amplify radiating light, the interlacing of lines to complicate space, the impossibly accurate description of subjects using the barest of means" (quoted in exh. cat., op. cit.., 2007, p. 11).
The two-story rural residence depicted here may be one of the buildings seen in Ville d'Avray, maisons blanches, which Seurat painted in 1882-1883 (Hauke, no. 20; fig. 2). Similar white-washed structures situated in the environs of Paris may be found in other paintings done during this period (Hauke, nos. 18, 19, 52, 53, 55 and 56), and in a few other drawings as well (Hauke, nos. 455, 545, 546 and 547). These bland-looking dwellings would hardly seem promising as a subject, except that they appealed to Seurat's inclination to "abstract and simplify." He was interested in their overall, outward shapes, and indicated only a few windows by way of detail; they provide the architectural geometry needed to contrast the more disorderly and sprawling forms of foliage and other landscape features. In each of the related paintings Seurat viewed these buildings from a distance; in the drawings, however, he approached them more closely, and as a result their looming forms take on a hauntingly mysterious and monumental grandeur.
The granulated appearance of the drawn sheet, in which the light tone of the paper appears to flicker through the varied density of line, suggested to Seurat the micro-pointillist technique that he would soon perfect in his oils on canvas and employ in La Grande Jatte. These pioneering drawings point even further into the future, well beyond the tragically abbreviated lifetime of this extraordinary artist. In his compulsion to reduce form to essential shapes, and with his inclination to see order and a subtle geometry in the world, Seurat appears to have suggested the inevitability of Cubism, and in his feeling for contrasts of lit and shaded forms, he may have augured the even more radical art of non-representational painting (lot 5). Beyond this, the strange experience of imponderable stillness and silence in this Seurat drawing, which so seductively beckons to the curiosity and wonderment of the viewer, resonates distantly but no less impactfully in a modern counterpart like Magritte's L'empire des lumières, an enigmatic image that insinuates the disquiet and apprehension of our own age.
(fig. 1) Georges Seurat, Aman-Jean, 1882-1883. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. BARCODE 25995237
(fig. 2) Georges Seurat, Ville d'Avray, maisons blanches, 1882-1883. Board of Trustees of the National Galleries on Merseyside (Walker Art Gallery), Liverpool. BARCODE 25995244
Paul Signac declared: "These are the most beautiful painter's drawings that ever existed" (quoted in J. Russell, Seurat, London, 1965 pp. 65-66). This past winter we were treated to a delectably rewarding retrospective of Seurat's drawings at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, which included this important landscape drawing from the Hillman Family Foundation. For many, the truth of Signac's pronouncement became apparent nearly from the very start, and then deepened with repeated visits. After a room of some very early academic and Ingresque studies done during the late 1870s, and some more personal, but still tentative transitional figure drawings, viewers suddenly encountered one of the supreme masterworks of late 19th century draughtsmanship, the exquisite portrait of Aman-Jean, which Seurat drew during 1882-1883 (Hauke, no. 588; fig. 1) and sent to the 1883 Salon des Indépendants. It was the first work that he displayed before the public. In the following spring he completed and exhibited La baignade, Asnières (Hauke, no. 62; National Gallery, London) and later that year he began the the large canvas for which he became controversial in his day, and famous in ours, Un dimanche à la Grande Jatte (Hauke no. 162; The Art Institute of Chicago), which he completed in the fall of 1885 and placed in the Eighth and last Impressionist group show of 1886.
Hauke had listed the present drawing as circa 1886, too late it would seem, in light of related works (discussed below). The curators of the MoMA exhibition ascribed the Hillman drawing to circa 1882-1884. This seems right, and places this drawing squarely within that remarkable period in which Seurat quickly achieved his definitive, characteristic style. Indeed, Robert L. Herbert has noted that "in his drawings of 1881-1883 Seurat first revealed his astonishing early maturity" (in Seurat Drawings and Paintings, New Haven, 2001, p. 19), and Russell has further pointed out that "Seurat was...in his drawings the master of a fully developed and entirely original style, before he had painted a single picture that could be called his own" (op. cit., p. 84).
The hallmarks of this decisive moment, when Seurat perfected his unique and unprecedented manner of drawing, are present here: his use of deep black Conté crayon on fine Michallet laid paper, in which the horizontal chain and vertical laid lines parallel the simple geometry that Seurat discovered in this typical countryside maison carrée, or "square house." Looming silhouettes of trees frame areas of lighter half-tones; the great dark mass of the curving road in the foreground opposes the pale expanse of sky in the distance. This scene exists in an eerily still twilight; the artist's crayon has left very little area of the sheet untouched and unshaded. Jodi Hauptman described Seurat's method in her introduction to the MoMA retrospective catalogue:
"Abandoning the contour line of his training, the artist stroked the Conté crayon across the sheet's ridges, thus devising his own kind of draughtsmanship: the emphasis on dark and light tones to abstract and simplify... the layering of pigment to create a range of densities, from the translucent scrim to impenetrable darkness; the exploitation of reserve to amplify radiating light, the interlacing of lines to complicate space, the impossibly accurate description of subjects using the barest of means" (quoted in exh. cat., op. cit.., 2007, p. 11).
The two-story rural residence depicted here may be one of the buildings seen in Ville d'Avray, maisons blanches, which Seurat painted in 1882-1883 (Hauke, no. 20; fig. 2). Similar white-washed structures situated in the environs of Paris may be found in other paintings done during this period (Hauke, nos. 18, 19, 52, 53, 55 and 56), and in a few other drawings as well (Hauke, nos. 455, 545, 546 and 547). These bland-looking dwellings would hardly seem promising as a subject, except that they appealed to Seurat's inclination to "abstract and simplify." He was interested in their overall, outward shapes, and indicated only a few windows by way of detail; they provide the architectural geometry needed to contrast the more disorderly and sprawling forms of foliage and other landscape features. In each of the related paintings Seurat viewed these buildings from a distance; in the drawings, however, he approached them more closely, and as a result their looming forms take on a hauntingly mysterious and monumental grandeur.
The granulated appearance of the drawn sheet, in which the light tone of the paper appears to flicker through the varied density of line, suggested to Seurat the micro-pointillist technique that he would soon perfect in his oils on canvas and employ in La Grande Jatte. These pioneering drawings point even further into the future, well beyond the tragically abbreviated lifetime of this extraordinary artist. In his compulsion to reduce form to essential shapes, and with his inclination to see order and a subtle geometry in the world, Seurat appears to have suggested the inevitability of Cubism, and in his feeling for contrasts of lit and shaded forms, he may have augured the even more radical art of non-representational painting (lot 5). Beyond this, the strange experience of imponderable stillness and silence in this Seurat drawing, which so seductively beckons to the curiosity and wonderment of the viewer, resonates distantly but no less impactfully in a modern counterpart like Magritte's L'empire des lumières, an enigmatic image that insinuates the disquiet and apprehension of our own age.
(fig. 1) Georges Seurat, Aman-Jean, 1882-1883. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. BARCODE 25995237
(fig. 2) Georges Seurat, Ville d'Avray, maisons blanches, 1882-1883. Board of Trustees of the National Galleries on Merseyside (Walker Art Gallery), Liverpool. BARCODE 25995244