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Lot Essay
In the years 1880-1881 the essential characteristics of Seurat's mature dratftsmanship became manifest. He quickly evolved from a primarily linear style of filled-in outlines to a more assertively hatched technique that creates volume by juxtaposing different degrees of light and shade. Finally, he "began to take his formal system of broken, irregular contours and crosshatched grays beyond the boundaries of the figure and extended it into a kind a crystalline structure." (E. Franz and B. Grove, Georges Seurat Drawings, Boston, 1984, p. 56).
In the present drawing the figure is still largely defined by precise contours; nevertheless, the subject is fully integrated within a completely "drawn" environment consisting of a web of finely applied lines. These range from the emphatic and regular hatching in the figure and lamppost to a looser, more improvised network of curvilinear threads. A soft halo of light surrounds the figure, reinforcing the silhouette, without isolating it from its environment. The humble naturalism of his subject notwithstanding, Seurat's treatment is subtly modernist; he constructs the figure out of simple shapes that seem nearly abstract, creating a pattern of contrasted light and shade that is inseparable from the realism of his subject.
In the present drawing the figure is still largely defined by precise contours; nevertheless, the subject is fully integrated within a completely "drawn" environment consisting of a web of finely applied lines. These range from the emphatic and regular hatching in the figure and lamppost to a looser, more improvised network of curvilinear threads. A soft halo of light surrounds the figure, reinforcing the silhouette, without isolating it from its environment. The humble naturalism of his subject notwithstanding, Seurat's treatment is subtly modernist; he constructs the figure out of simple shapes that seem nearly abstract, creating a pattern of contrasted light and shade that is inseparable from the realism of his subject.