Speakasso › Paintings › A Sunday on La Grande Jatte
A Sunday on La Grande Jatte
Georges Seurat, 1884–1886
In Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Ferris’s best friend Cameron Frye intensely studies this nearly ten-foot-wide painting during a scene set at the Art Institute. Featuring people of every age and social class on the banks of the River Seine, A Sunday on La Grande Jatte—1884 has captivated visitors ever since its arrival at the museum in 1924. If we, like Cameron, come closer to the painting, figures and forms dissolve into dots and dashes of complementary colors laid side by side, characteristic of Seurat’s pointillist technique. Many smaller painted and drawn sketches and several larger canvases, in which Seurat laid out the parameters for the landscape and figures, led up to this majestically composed scene. Seurat returned to the work two years after its start date, amplifying the silhouettes of some figures and adding others. Some of these, like the monkey on the leash, seem so integral to the final composition that it is hard to imagine them as add-ons, but others, like the man carrying a rolled newspaper in the furthest distance, are barely noticeable. To the artist, however, every decision was essential to his aim of making a painting of modern life equivalent to a classical Greek frieze.
What is in the painting
- Dots, not strokes. Up close, the whole surface is tiny dots of pure color that blend only in the viewer's eye.
- Frozen figures. People stand and sit like statues, in profile or facing front, almost motionless.
- The monkey. The lady on the right has a monkey on a leash, one of the details added later.
Did you know? This is the very painting Cameron stares at in the movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
About the painting
- Artist
- Georges Seurat
- Year
- 1884–1886
- Style
- Pointillism
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Size
- 207.5 × 308.1 cm (81 3/4 × 121 1/4 in.)
How to describe it in Speakasso
In Speakasso you describe the painting in your own words and an AI draws it again. These words are forbidden in this round — each one costs 15 points:
A description that scores high
A sunny riverside park full of people on the grass, stiff and still like statues. On the right, a tall lady in a dark bustle dress and a gentleman in a top hat stand in profile, a monkey on a leash at her feet. People sit in the shade on the left, ladies hold small sunshades, and sailboats glide on the water. Bright greens and blues. Made entirely of tiny dots of pure color.
The tricky part: Stress the technique: the whole scene is built from tiny dots of pure color, and people stand stiffly like statues.
The method behind it: what is painted first, then where things are, then colour and light, then the style. Read the full guide
More by Georges Seurat in the game
