A Sunday on La Grande Jatte

Seurat used a technique he called Chromoluminarism, later known as Pointillism or Divisionism. He applied millions of small, precise dots of pure, unmixed colour directly to the canvas. Rather than mixing colours on a palette, he placed complementary colours next to each other, relying on the viewer's eye to optically 'mix' them at a distance — producing what he believed was greater luminosity than conventional mixed pigments.

The painting is in the permanent collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, displayed in Gallery 240. It is one of the museum's signature works and is displayed across from Seurat's preliminary study for the same composition.

The painting depicts a Sunday afternoon on the Île de la Grande Jatte, an island in the Seine river west of Paris. Approximately 48 figures are shown — families, soldiers, workers, and bourgeois couples — relaxing in the shade and sun of the riverbank. Many carry parasols; a woman on the right leads a monkey on a lead. The scene is a cross-section of Parisian society during the 1880s.

Seurat worked on the painting for more than two years, from 1884 to 1886. He made approximately 60 preparatory studies in oil and conté crayon, visiting the island repeatedly across different seasons to study the light. He then constructed the final 3-metre-wide canvas in his Paris studio, applying millions of individual dots of colour by hand.

Yes — Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's Sunday in the Park with George (1984, 2017 revival) is based directly on the creation of A Sunday on La Grande Jatte. The first act depicts Seurat painting the work and the tensions it caused in his life; the second act follows a fictional contemporary descendant. The musical won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1985.