Dot-to-dot painter and part-time swimming baths attendant, Georges Seurat was born into a Parisian middle class family but, rather than following in his estate agent father's footsteps or having babies like his mum, he went off to art school and got interested in scientific colour theory. After tragically becoming addicted to the cake decorations known as 'hundreds and thousands', he began expressing his inner turmoil by painting in the manner that would eventually become known as Pointillism, but he preferred to call Divisionism.
Some sad soul with nothing better to do also went to the trouble of describing Georges as a Neo-Impressionist because, instead of responding to subject matter in the visceral way that Monet and Renoir favoured i.e. leaping around, shouting at it, smothering it in big wet kisses, Georges went for a more cerebral and controlled, if not to say cold and calculating, approach. He would study his intended subject very carefully then return to his studio and spend months doing hundreds of preparatory sketches and enormous sums in an attempt to work out exactly how many of the exciting little coloured dots that he loved so dearly it would take to fill one of his giant canvases, often losing count at a crucial moment when his friend Paul Signac called by for a game of connect four, then having to start all over again.
This is probably why he only managed to complete just six large but stunning figure compositions in his entire life, although dying of diphtheria at 31 didn't exactly help his score. Georges' rare and beautiful works are cherished the world over and originals and reproductions hang in some of the most esteemed homes, business premises and optician's waiting-rooms in the world.
