Georges-Pierre Seurat 1859 – 1891
Oil on panel 24.8 15.4 cm
Given by Captain S.W. Sykes, 1948
Collections record: PD.1-1948
© The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
The rue Saint-Vincent in Montmartre was a popular haunt of artists in the nineteenth century. This view was probably painted in the spring of 1884. At the end of the previous year, Seurat had made another painting of the street under snow (private collection), and both his sensitivity to the changing moods of nature, and high-toned palette reveal the growing impact of the Impressionist painters on his work
By far the majority of Seurat’s paintings are executed on wooden supports, of dimensions similar to this panel. These ‘croquetons’ as Seurat called them are sometimes prepared with a white paint ground, but more often the wood is left in its natural state, to create an intermediary warm brown tonality, his only preparation in this case being to scratch the wooden surface to give it ‘tooth’.
This painting was presented to the Museum in 1948 to celebrate the centenary of its opening to the public.
