Dots

Georges Seurat: A Sunday afternoon at La Grande Jatte.

You do learn a lot about a painting when you work with a jigsaw version of it. I know this this painting quite well, but I am now seeing all sorts of detail that I have missed. Look at the little girl walking so primly with her mother and yet staring out - was she aware that the artist was sketching her I wonder. With a dress like that I don't think she would be allowed to run about, as the other child is doing. (I am aware that I haven't found her face yet, I was looking at the whole picture!)

It is also that one becomes aware of the way it is painted, in this case - lots of tiny dots. Seurat was an impressionist painter and this was exhibited for the first time in 1886 with other impressionist paintings. He used a technique of tiny dots and brush strokes which the viewer puts together and perceives as a patch of colour. He felt this captured the light more effectively. (Divisionism or Pointillism).

Not an easy puzzle by any means, but very satisfying. 

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