Description
Study for A Sunday on La Grande Jatte – a hand-painted reproduction of Seurat’s painting
This is the study, not the finished painting. The famous two-metre canvas, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, hangs in the Art Institute of Chicago and is a separate product on this shelf; what you are looking at here is the last full-scale colour study for it, held by The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Among our paintings on canvas it is the one that shows the work behind the work. Ours is made as a hand-painted painting, oil on canvas.
What is on the canvas
The same bank, the same line of trees, the same river as the finished picture — but the figures are still summaries. The band of shadow across the foreground and the lit lawn behind it are already fixed, the sails are already on the water, yet the faces, the dresses and the famous silhouettes are not yet sharpened. The paint is laid in broad, quick strokes rather than in small dots. It was made to test where the light falls, not to be exhibited.
What changed between this and Chicago
Between this study and the finished canvas Seurat added figures, moved them, and made them stiffer and more ceremonial. The foreground shadow stayed. The trees stayed. The rhythm of sun and shade stayed. That is what makes the study a good guide to the big picture: it shows what was decided first — the space — and what came only afterwards — the people.
A note on the original
The original is oil on canvas, painted in 1884, and belongs to The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, accession 51.112.6, the Bequest of Sam A. Lewisohn, 1951. We state width first and then height, and the table below gives the measurements in that order. Because the original is wide and low, our size ladder runs to 200 x 140 cm.
What you receive
The painting is made by our painter by hand, oil on canvas, in the size you choose and to your own measurements if you prefer. The wide, low shape is generous above a sofa or a sideboard. When the canvas is finished we photograph it and send you the picture for approval before it leaves the studio. You choose the frame in our 3D application. Every artwork we sell is hand-painted and never printed.
If you are looking for the famous finished painting, that is Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte below — a different product on this shelf. The same island in grey weather, empty of people, is there too.
