CategoriesStyles and Movements
Pointillism
A painting technique that builds images from small, distinct dots of colour, developed by Georges Seurat in the mid-1880s.
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About
The term names a way of handling paint rather than a movement: small, separate dots of colour that the eye gathers into forms at a distance. Georges Seurat developed it in the mid-1880s. The name came from critics, and Seurat and Paul Signac preferred to speak of divisionism, a broader term for separating colour into distinct touches. Close up the canvas is an even field of flecks; a few steps back, the dots settle into light and shade.
It travelled quickly. Théo van Rysselberghe used it for portraits in Belgium, Henri-Edmond Cross loosened it into broad, mosaic-like strokes, and Vincent van Gogh tried it in Paris in 1887. Italian Divisionists such as Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo adapted it in The Fourth Estate (1898–1901), and Piet Mondrian passed through it around 1909. Later, the Ben-Day dots of commercial printing became a subject in themselves for Roy Lichtenstein.
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