«And it is these perambulations, I argue, and the accumulation
of related views of the objects and spaces around him seen from multiple
perspectives, as much as the particular ports and coasts that these pictures
depict, that are the unifying subject of Seurat's seascape series.»
Michelle Foa

Together with Cézanne, van Gogh and Paul Gauguin, Georges Seurat (1859-1891) is considered one of the 'fathers' of modern art. He was also the most original of France's avant-garde artists in the late 19th century. Seurat was born in 1859 in Paris, and by the time of his early demise he had provided Impressionism with a theoretical underpinning. Stimulated by the key discoveries of contemporary colour theories, Seurat began to cover canvases with contiguous, schematically positioned dabs of pure colour, and was satisfied to allow these dots to take on form only in the eye of the beholder. This process, which would come to be known as 'Pointillism', soon inspired other artists, who recognized the merits of a technique that replaced individual brushstrokes with systematically painted dots, painstakingly applied to the canvas until it resembled a web of juxtaposed points. Artistic expression thus ceded its decisive place in the painting process to the eye, which in turn required agility and schooling to produce the optical effects desired. A study of Seurat's seascape paintings in particular fosters better understanding of his technique. In the exhibition catalogue, Michelle Foa locates the genesis of such works as 'The Channel at Gravelines' in the scientific and philosophical writings of Hermann von Helmholtz (1821-1894), one of the 19th century's leading physicists and, by the artist's own account, an influence on Seurat's art.