I loved reading through the comments about your favorite artists on our Art.com $500 giveaway so much that I thought to celebrate Rowena being the winner of the giveaway, we’d check out her favorite painting, Georges Seurat’s A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.

Georges Seurat spent over two years making over 50 sketches and drawings for this large painting. Rather than mixing colors on the palette, Seurat believed that using dots of colors next to their contrast colors would cause the eye to perceive a single shade that would be more brilliant than standard brush strokes. Sadly the paints that Seurat used were unstable and the zinc yellow has now turned to brown, but his invention of the technique known as pointillism was ground breaking, and this painting is one of the markers for neo-impressionism.

This painting was also a social commentary on the immorality and excess of the bourgeoise {a lady with a monkey on a leash, anyone?} as the figures are all in shadow and the park was known as a place for procuring prostitutes. But dark spin aside, the spring colors and tone are glorious and perfect for this petal inspired fashion season.