A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte

A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (1884–86) is Seurat's masterpiece and the defining image of Neo-Impressionism. Worked over two years from dozens of plein-air studies, the monumental canvas depicts leisure-seekers on the island in the Seine north of Paris. Its debut at the eighth and final Impressionist exhibition in 1886 announced divisionism as a new avant-garde movement. The systematic application of pure-colour dots to produce optical colour mixing through scientific method transformed the direction of modern painting. Art Institute of Chicago.

The entire surface is covered in precise dots of unmixed colour laid according to Chevreul's law of simultaneous contrast and Rood's colour optics. Figures are reduced to simplified, monumental silhouettes under even, high afternoon light. Seurat later added a border of painted dots to integrate the canvas with its frame.