Landscape

Prints and Drawings

c. 1881

Georges Seurat
French, 1859–1891

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.

Status: Currently Off View
Department: Prints and Drawings

Artist: Georges Seurat
Title: Landscape
Place: France (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: Made 1876–1886
Medium: Black Conté crayon on off-white laid paper
Dimensions: 24.9 × 31.6 cm (9 13/16 × 12 1/2 in.)
Credit Line: Gift of Richard and Mary L. Gray
Reference Number: 2019.866
IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.: https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/202357/manifest.json

César M. de Hauke, “Seurat et son oeuvre” (Gründ, 1961), vol. 2, p. 70, no. 452.

Brussels, Musée Royal des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Les maîtres de l’Impressionnisme et leur temps, 1922, cat. 32.
Art Institute of Chicago, Gray Collection: Seven Centuries of Art, Sept. 25, 2010–Jan. 2, 2011, cat. 69 (ill.).
The Art Institute of Chicago, “Pure Drawing: Seven Centuries of Art from the Gray Collection”, January 25 - May 10, 2020, pp. 73-74, fig. 8, p. 141, GC 97, traveled to New York, The Morgan Library, February 19 - June 6, 2021, and Berkeley CA, UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, August 4 - November 28, 2021.

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.

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.

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IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world.

Learn more.