The pointillist coastal landscape

Between 1885 and 1890, the artist Georges Seurat (1859-1891) traveled from his home in Paris to the north coast of France for the summer months »to wash his eyes of the days spent in the studio and to translate in the most faithful manner the bright clarity, in all its nuances«, as he described it. Seurat, who is considered the most important representative of Pointillism, is best known for his work A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (1884–1886). During his stays on the English Channel, he further developed the Pointillist painting technique. With 27 paintings, oil sketches, and drawings, the Courtauld Institute of Art demonstrates in detail how Seurat used coastal landscapes to shape one of the most famous art movements of modernism. The works on display are rarely shown and are presented much less frequently than Seurat's Parisian paintings. Seurat and the Sea, the first exhibition ever to focus on Seurat's coastal paintings, therefore offers a rare opportunity to explore this important but neglected area of Seurat's oeuvre. The exhibition runs until May 17 in London.

Seurat, who died in 1891 at the age of 31, presumably of diphtheria, left behind a comparatively small oeuvre. There are few exhibitions of his work; the current show, for example, is the first on Seurat in the United Kingdom in almost 30 years. The Courtauld has the largest collection of Seurat's works in the United Kingdom.