The Stone Breaker

1880–1882

A studio with Aman-Jean and two years of monochrome drawing

Back in Paris, Seurat shares a studio with his friend Aman-Jean while renting a small apartment at 16 rue de Chabrol; for the next two years he works at mastering the art of monochrome drawing and studies Eugène Delacroix carefully, making notes on his use of colour.

1880s

Charles Henry's lectures at the Sorbonne

In the 1880s Seurat hears lectures by the mathematician Charles Henry at the Sorbonne on the emotional properties and symbolic meaning of lines and colour; there remains controversy over how far he adopted Henry's ideas.

1880s

The colour theorists: Chevreul, Rood, Blanc

Seurat finds the idea of separate strokes of pure colour that blend optically in the viewer's eye in “Modern Chromatics” (1879) by the American physicist Ogden Rood and in the chemist Michel Eugène Chevreul's work on the law of simultaneous contrast of colours; according to his friends, his bedside book is Charles Blanc's “Grammaire des arts du dessin” (1867).

1 May – 20 June 1883

First exhibited work: the portrait of Aman-Jean at the Salon

Seurat's first exhibited work is a Conté crayon drawing of Edmond Aman-Jean shown at the Paris Salon of 1883; from that year until his death he exhibits at the Salon, the Salon des Indépendants, Les XX in Brussels and other shows.

1884

Meeting Paul Signac

At the first exhibition of the Groupe des Artistes Indépendants Seurat meets Paul Signac, a future follower of pointillism; Signac later wrote that “Bathers” is painted in broad flat strokes and looks less bright than the Impressionists' canvases, but that the systematic separation of light, shade and local colour gives it harmony.

15 May – 30 June 1884

The Salon rejects “Bathers”: a debut at the Indépendants

The official Salon rejects “Bathers at Asnières”, and Seurat shows the painting instead at the Groupe des Artistes Indépendants, which runs from 15 May to 30 June 1884 — his debut as a painter.