La Grande Jatte (Study I)

Painted in 1884 and now at the Buffalo AKG Art Museum (formerly Albright-Knox), this first study for 'La Grande Jatte' is among the earliest documented works in the long preparation campaign for Seurat's masterpiece. As Study I, it records the initial compositional exploration of the island of La Grande Jatte in the Seine near Neuilly, before the systematic population of the landscape with the Parisian leisure-seekers who would come to define the finished canvas. The Buffalo AKG study is thus a historical document of the moment Seurat first saw the potential of this specific location for his monumental project.

The earliest study is relatively open and exploratory in its compositional approach, establishing the landscape's basic spatial structure—the tree-lined bank, the water, the distant shore—before the figures were introduced. The colour application is transitional, between Impressionist and the mature divisionism.