Le Petit paysan en bleu

Le Petit paysan en bleu (The Little Peasant in Blue, 1882) reflects Seurat's sustained engagement with Millet's legacy of dignified rural figure subjects. The small figure seen in strong contre-jour light — isolated against an open landscape — suggests the monumental simplicity Seurat admired in the Barbizon masters while pushing towards greater tonal abstraction. During 1882 he was honing the systematic approach to tonal gradation that would soon develop into divisionism. Held at the Musée d'Orsay.

The figure is silhouetted in deep shadow against a light-suffused background, creating a stark tonal opposition that gives the small work considerable presence. Seurat renders the contre-jour effect with cross-hatched strokes of dark and mid tones, the pale sky surrounding the figure like an aureole.