Landscape

Description

This haunting work is one of a remarkable body of landscapes Georges Seurat drew in the early 1880s. A lone figure moves along a path through a park setting with a hilly terrain, tended lawns, and tall trees. With its mysterious, twilit atmosphere, Landscape demonstrates the unique shadowy and dramatically lit tenebrist style that the artist developed in that decade.

The drawing’s brilliance lies in the breathtaking skill with which Seurat applied Conté crayon, using varying pressure on textured paper to create luminous middle tones counterpoised with solid blacks, demonstrating that Seurat was one of the great masters of black and white.

Provenance

Gustave Gervaert. Madeleine Octave Maus, Brussels, E. V. Thaw, New York. Sold, Christie’s, New York, May 11, 1995, lot 101, to Richard and Mary L. Gray, Chicago; given to the Art Institute of Chicago, 2019.

Landscape

Georges Seurat

c. 1881

Accession Number

202357

Medium

Black Conté crayon on off-white laid paper

Dimensions

24.9 × 31.6 cm (9 13/16 × 12 1/2 in.)

Classification

drawings (visual works)

Museum

The Art Institute of Chicago

Chicago, United States

Credit Line

Gift of Richard and Mary L. Gray