Initially he applied coarser dots on areas of more even colour, used simultaneous colour contrast, then his blobs grew to become patches of paint resembling the tesserae of mosaics.
pointillisme
Seurat intended to use optical mixing of many tiny dots of colour, often contrasting, in Divisionism. How this worked out in his major paintings.
After a promisingly Realist start at the age of just 17, he progressed through Impressionist style and became a Divisionist in 1887-88.
In the last decade of his career, he visited Venice twice and painted it extensively. He also turned more to watercolours.
A pupil of Carol’s-Duran, he switched to Divisionism/Pointillism in 1891, when Georges Seurat died. Early paintings are gentle and delicate before he turned the chroma up.
Examining the detail of how he applied patches of paint over a period of almost fifty years reveals how his pointillism changed.
Pointillist oil paintings from the last 15 years of his life, when he mainly painted watercolours. These concentrate on ports and bridges of Paris.
He almost stopped painting in oils from 1910 until the end of the war. But his few works continued to develop his Neo-Impressionist style.
Paintings of Rotterdam and Amsterdam, followed by six weeks in Istanbul, where he painted the Golden Horn and the Süleymaniye Mosque.
After a month in Venice he had amassed 200 watercolour studies which were to keep him busy for the next two years painting shimmering views of the city.
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