art 749 Georges Seurat (1859-1891)

Description of the painting "Horse" by Georges Seurat

He preferred to paint on wooden boards rather than on canvas. Later, when he decided to create a major work, he pursued the goal of drawing attention to himself. And in 1883, at the Salon, he exhibited his paintings, as well as at the First Exhibition of Independent Artists. For one of his large paintings, which Sera painted for a year, but the jury reacted negatively. Later he organized his own exhibition, where he presented several works, including the first one. Still, opinions were divided, with a high percentage of negativity prevailing.

For example, one member of the jury called the paintings incomprehensible, utterly unsuccessful and horrible, which were devoid of meaning and contained a contrivance. Sera, however, was happy with this as well, but ended his collaboration with the Salon. Having met the famous Paul Signac there, he teamed up with him, creating a new technique of painting, which they called pointillism.

Georges Seurat’s paintings feature optical analysis combined with deep color combinations and carefully constructed composition. Having created such an original technique of writing, Sera himself suffered from it, as it was very complex and labor-intensive. In this regard, the artist in his short life created only seven large canvases, many of which depicted horses - they were his most favorite animal. Thus, this canvas shows a lone horse, harnessed perhaps to a cart, which the viewer cannot see. And this is no coincidence. There were no coincidences in Sera’s work; everything had meaning. In the picture the lonely animal reflects the inner essence of the author, his experiences and loneliness, despite the fact that the artist had a family and a small child. But the inner complexes that originated in him were not unfounded. He was oppressed by the trivial attitude to his paintings, the lack of understanding by experts in the field of painting of his innovated technique of writing. Unfortunately, his life was short. His death came to him in the prime of his youth, at the age of 32.