Landscape
Georges Seurat (French, 1859–1891)
c. 1881
- Medium
- Black Conté crayon on off-white laid paper
- Classification
- Drawing and Watercolor
- Dimensions
- 24.9 × 31.6 cm (9 13/16 × 12 1/2 in.)
- Culture
- France
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Prints and Drawings
- Credit line
- Gift of Richard and Mary L. Gray
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Little Ones profiles and older: it shows gentle subjects for the very young. How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
This haunting work is one of a remarkable body of landscapes Georges Seurat drew in the early 1880s. A lone figure moves along a path through a park setting with a hilly terrain, tended lawns, and tall trees. With its mysterious, twilit atmosphere, Landscape demonstrates the unique shadowy and dramatically lit tenebrist style that the artist developed in that decade.
The drawing’s brilliance lies in the breathtaking skill with which Seurat applied Conté crayon, using varying pressure on textured paper to create luminous middle tones counterpoised with solid blacks, demonstrating that Seurat was one of the great masters of black and white.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
