La Grande Jatte (Study VII)

La Grande Jatte Study VII is among the later full-colour oil studies Seurat made before completing his monumental final canvas (now in the Art Institute of Chicago). The studies for La Grande Jatte are among the most methodically produced preparatory works in the history of French painting — Seurat visited the island on the Seine throughout 1884–85, making observations and small colour studies before assembling the final composition. By Study VII, the core formal elements were established, and Seurat was testing his emerging divisionist colour system.

Small dots and dashes of contrasting colour are applied systematically across the surface — the technique Seurat was developing toward what critics would call Pointillism. Complementary colour pairs (orange and blue, green and red) vibrate optically when viewed at distance.