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Lot Essay
Le tas de pierre, depicting two stone breakers at work, was painted circa 1884, a period of intense artistic exploration for Seurat. The artist was seeking a new means of visualising the world and capturing it on canvas. Finding Impressionism's truthful yet overbearing spontaneity ultimately unable to capture a scene, Seurat sought to create a more methodical and scientific means of representing the scene before him and of capturing life on the canvas. For many years, he had shown a precocious thirst for theory, reading the authoritative works on colour theory as well as studying many of the world's great artists, past and present. To this effect, he came to know the Louvre well while also visiting the fourth Impressionist exhibition in 1879, and left no stone unturned in his examination of the methods others had conceived and used. Seurat's meticulous groundwork culminated in his revolutionary Une baignade, Asnières of 1884 (see fig. 4). Le tas de pierre, which dates to the period of experimentation immediately preceding the painting of Une baignade, Asnières, reflects many of the diverse strands of influence and thought that were combining in Seurat's mind at the time, from light theory to specific painters' techniques.
In Une baignade, Asnières, which Seurat revealed to an unsuspecting world at the first Salon des Indépendants having only ever exhibited a small portrait drawing before, the figures are lent a great grace and dignity, the enormous scale of the painting complementing their intrinsic monumentality. This imposing painting captures and conveys a sense of the almost plastic presence of the people depicted. On the level of technique, Seurat's later Pointillism was anticipated by the dense build-up of tiny shimmering dashes of colour, as well as his exploitation of contrasts, an approach evident in a more nascent form in Le tas de pierre. Looking retrospectively at Seurat's later Pointillism, one could deduce that he was purely scientific in the application of his art, a view supported by his documented interest in theories of light and perception in the works of Chevreul, Rood and Helmholtz, among others. However, Le tas de pierre's swirling brushstrokes reveal a painterly manner, reflecting the comprehensive nature of Seurat's investigations into a means of representing these labourers. Despite the impression of spontaneity that the vivid brushstrokes convey, method always remains evident - the build-up of colours, of tone upon tone, is specifically designed to exploit the various tonalities of the scene at hand. The diverse light and shadow effects appear to have been captured in a reduced range of yellow, green and blue as shown especially in the almost monochrome middle- and backgrounds. However this is a misleading effect - Seurat has in fact built up a complex latticework of light effects, with the yellows, greens and blues shimmering, their myriad values prefiguring his later Pointillism.
During this groundbreaking period of pictorial experimentation, Seurat returned several times to the image of stonebreakers, a theme made revolutionary over thirty years earlier by Gustave Courbet. In the Salon of 1851, Courbet had shown several realist works that attracted huge scandal, not least Les casseurs de pierres (fig. 3), an iconic painting of two labourers breaking stones that was heralded by his friend Pierre-Joseph Proudhon as the first Socialist painting. Seurat himself seems to have exploited the connection in Le tas de pierre - the left-hand labourer appears similar in his upper half to the labourer to the right of Les casseurs de pierres, reinforcing the idea that Seurat was knowingly linking himself with the greatest tradition of revolutionary and pioneering art.
Similar themes of labourers had remained popular with the Impressionists, not least because of the ambiguity of the scenes - manual workers such as stone-breakers were a common sight both within and without the city's bounds. The workers' surroundings are masked by the verdure, and so the viewer is left to wonder whether this scene is taking place in the countryside or in a suburb. Seurat's painting technique does not allow him to present the poverty of his subjects in the lurid detail of Courbet. Instead, he fills the workers with a strange, hieratic calm, lending them a monumentality and grace absent from Courbet's version. The sense of physical mass and presence that so distinguish Seurat's Une baignade, Asnières can already be felt in these workers.
Another of the groundbreaking exhibitors at the Salon des Indépendants, soon to be Seurat's great colleague in Neo-Impressionism, was Paul Signac (see fig. 1), the first owner of the work. The pair became great friends, and many of the most lucid analyses of Seurat's work and importance were written by his friend, both in his publications and his private journals. Signac came to own several paintings by his friend, showing his discerning understanding of Seurat's art in his choices, and amongst these was Le tas de pierre, although it was probably not in Signac's collection by 1886, when Seurat wrote a rough list of the owners and locations of all his paintings. Signac may therefore have received the painting as a gift from the artist or from Seurat's family (Signac was one of his executors and received at least one painting as a show of gratitude) or perhaps, recognising its importance, purchased it himself after Seurat's premature death in 1891.
In Une baignade, Asnières, which Seurat revealed to an unsuspecting world at the first Salon des Indépendants having only ever exhibited a small portrait drawing before, the figures are lent a great grace and dignity, the enormous scale of the painting complementing their intrinsic monumentality. This imposing painting captures and conveys a sense of the almost plastic presence of the people depicted. On the level of technique, Seurat's later Pointillism was anticipated by the dense build-up of tiny shimmering dashes of colour, as well as his exploitation of contrasts, an approach evident in a more nascent form in Le tas de pierre. Looking retrospectively at Seurat's later Pointillism, one could deduce that he was purely scientific in the application of his art, a view supported by his documented interest in theories of light and perception in the works of Chevreul, Rood and Helmholtz, among others. However, Le tas de pierre's swirling brushstrokes reveal a painterly manner, reflecting the comprehensive nature of Seurat's investigations into a means of representing these labourers. Despite the impression of spontaneity that the vivid brushstrokes convey, method always remains evident - the build-up of colours, of tone upon tone, is specifically designed to exploit the various tonalities of the scene at hand. The diverse light and shadow effects appear to have been captured in a reduced range of yellow, green and blue as shown especially in the almost monochrome middle- and backgrounds. However this is a misleading effect - Seurat has in fact built up a complex latticework of light effects, with the yellows, greens and blues shimmering, their myriad values prefiguring his later Pointillism.
During this groundbreaking period of pictorial experimentation, Seurat returned several times to the image of stonebreakers, a theme made revolutionary over thirty years earlier by Gustave Courbet. In the Salon of 1851, Courbet had shown several realist works that attracted huge scandal, not least Les casseurs de pierres (fig. 3), an iconic painting of two labourers breaking stones that was heralded by his friend Pierre-Joseph Proudhon as the first Socialist painting. Seurat himself seems to have exploited the connection in Le tas de pierre - the left-hand labourer appears similar in his upper half to the labourer to the right of Les casseurs de pierres, reinforcing the idea that Seurat was knowingly linking himself with the greatest tradition of revolutionary and pioneering art.
Similar themes of labourers had remained popular with the Impressionists, not least because of the ambiguity of the scenes - manual workers such as stone-breakers were a common sight both within and without the city's bounds. The workers' surroundings are masked by the verdure, and so the viewer is left to wonder whether this scene is taking place in the countryside or in a suburb. Seurat's painting technique does not allow him to present the poverty of his subjects in the lurid detail of Courbet. Instead, he fills the workers with a strange, hieratic calm, lending them a monumentality and grace absent from Courbet's version. The sense of physical mass and presence that so distinguish Seurat's Une baignade, Asnières can already be felt in these workers.
Another of the groundbreaking exhibitors at the Salon des Indépendants, soon to be Seurat's great colleague in Neo-Impressionism, was Paul Signac (see fig. 1), the first owner of the work. The pair became great friends, and many of the most lucid analyses of Seurat's work and importance were written by his friend, both in his publications and his private journals. Signac came to own several paintings by his friend, showing his discerning understanding of Seurat's art in his choices, and amongst these was Le tas de pierre, although it was probably not in Signac's collection by 1886, when Seurat wrote a rough list of the owners and locations of all his paintings. Signac may therefore have received the painting as a gift from the artist or from Seurat's family (Signac was one of his executors and received at least one painting as a show of gratitude) or perhaps, recognising its importance, purchased it himself after Seurat's premature death in 1891.