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Impressionism & Post-Impressionism
Georges Seurat - The Forest at Pontaubert 1881The Forest at Pontaubert |
Johannes Vermeer - The Girl with a Pearl Earring 1665. It is not a portrait, but a ‘tronie’ – a painting of an imaginary figure. Tronies depict a certain type or character; in this case a girl in exotic dress, wearing an oriental turban and an improbably large pearl in her ear. ArtsViewer.com |
From Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City:
Seurat spent two months in the late summer and early fall of 1881 in Pontaubert, a village in the Cousin Valley southeast of Paris frequented by Daubigny, Corot, and other Barbizon artists. The visit inspired this "sous-bois" or forest glade, which Seurat probably completed the following winter in the studio he shared with his traveling companion and former École des Beaux-Arts schoolmate Aman-Jean. With its concert of greens, its subtle, shimmering light effects, and its vertical pattern of tree trunks, this work anticipates the landscapes in Seurat’s monumental Bathers at Asnières in London (1883–84) and A Sunday on La Grande Jatte in Chicago (1884–86).