In the National Gallery today the Pointillist exhibition gave us a chance to see the variety of techniques close up. George Seurat’s Le Chahut is well known and here it is with a closeup that shows the dots.
Several paintings had a muted palette with unnatural colours. And I think that suits pointillism.
The technical idea behind pointillist painting is to place complementary colours, such as red and green, side-by-side.
It has been known since the Middle Ages that putting complementary colours next to each other creates a vibrant and luminous effect because that is how our eyes see the mix. It wasn’t until the Pointillists that painters started using small dots and small splashes of colour to build a painting.
There were some pointillist portraits and I couldn’t help but think what the sitters may have been thinking while the painter painstakingly (and endlessly) put dots on the canvas to make the painting.
Against the idea of vibrant complementary colours, several paintings had a muted palette with unnatural colours. And I think that suits pointillism.
George Seurat’s Le Chahut is well known and here it is with a closeup that shows the dots. And perhaps that is the answer – overall the palette seems muted, but close up it is anything but.
Everyday Life
Sitting in the cafe in the National Gallery after the seeing the exhibition I started to see everything in the colours of the Pointillists. Outside the window the sky was turning and I kept watching it change.
You could see that is one of the benefits of art – that it seeps into everyday life and makes us see more acutely.
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