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Lot Essay
This drawing is one of forty from a sketchbook which marks the
transition of Seurat's drawing technique from its linear beginnings to the mature, characteristic style of the 1880s: "That Seurat began to evoke form almost without the aid of contour gave his technique a new immediacy in terms of both handling and structuring of the picture plane. From then on, his procedure functioned on two levels, which, though intimately related, required the spectator to focus his eyes, so to speak, at two different depths: first, on the surface of the drawing itself, the actual graphic rendering consisting of a highly differentiated superimposition, interpenetration, and nuancing of flat passages "woven through" with strokes; and second, on the deeper level of the subject, which was only suggested instead of clearly defined, and thus existed in a separate realm from the marks and traces, in the realm of the Other. The subject was therefore an illusion simultaneously offered to and withdrawn from the spectator, appealing to his imagination while receding from its final grasp" (E. Franz and B. Grave, Georges Seurat Drawings, New York, 1984, p. 46).
transition of Seurat's drawing technique from its linear beginnings to the mature, characteristic style of the 1880s: "That Seurat began to evoke form almost without the aid of contour gave his technique a new immediacy in terms of both handling and structuring of the picture plane. From then on, his procedure functioned on two levels, which, though intimately related, required the spectator to focus his eyes, so to speak, at two different depths: first, on the surface of the drawing itself, the actual graphic rendering consisting of a highly differentiated superimposition, interpenetration, and nuancing of flat passages "woven through" with strokes; and second, on the deeper level of the subject, which was only suggested instead of clearly defined, and thus existed in a separate realm from the marks and traces, in the realm of the Other. The subject was therefore an illusion simultaneously offered to and withdrawn from the spectator, appealing to his imagination while receding from its final grasp" (E. Franz and B. Grave, Georges Seurat Drawings, New York, 1984, p. 46).