Lot 48

Georges Seurat

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Description

Georges Seurat
La Zone (fillette dans la neige - La grève)
Conté crayon on paper
12 3/8 by 9 1/2 in.
31.5 by 24.2 cm

Provenance

Léon Appert
Knoedler & Co., Paris
Gérard Frères
Gustave Goubaux
Félix Fénéon, Paris (sold: 2e vente, Hotel Drouot, Paris, May 30, 1947, lot 40)
Alex Loeb
Max Kaganovitch, Paris
Acquired from the above

Exhibited

Paris, Galerie Georges Aubry, Aquarelles, pastels et dessins des Maitres du XIXe siècle, 1931, no. 75 (titled La Grève)
Paris, Galerie Paul Rosenberg, Georges Seurat, 1936, no. 102
London, Galerie Wildenstein, Seurat and his Contemporaries, 1937, no. 67
Zürich, Galerie Aktuaryus, Le Néo-Impressionnisme, 1937, no. 13
London, Galerie Leicester, Artists who died young, 1938, no. 31
Paris, Musée national d'Art moderne, Le dessins de Toulouse-Lautrec aux Cubistes, 1954, no. 191
Paris, Galerie Max Kaganovitch, Les 30 ans de la galerie: Dessins, aquarelles, tableaux, sculptures des XIXe et XXe siècles, 1966

Literature

Gotthard Jedlicka, "Die Zeichnungen Seurats," Galerie und Sammler, Zürich, October-November 1937, illustrated p. 149
George Seligman, The Drawings of Georges Seurat, New York, 1947, no. 32, pp. 23 & 68
C.M. de Hauke, Seurat et son oeuvre, vol. II, Paris, 1961, no. 521, illustrated p. 115

Catalogue Note

With his extraordinary eye for form and an understanding of the relationship of different shapes, Seurat could render an entire scene with a minimum of details. The present work, for example, depicts a young girl amidst a snowy embankment. The bright areas of the paper which the conté crayon has not touched is understood to be covered with snow. The composition bring to mind Japanese woodcuts where negative space is an integral part of the composition. The haze of the sky and figure in the foreground, who appears to be bundled in an overcoat, are the only structural elements necessary to provide a narrative for this picture. "The hidden subjects in Seurat's work challenge the spectator's own imaginative empathy...Since we cannot penetrate to the revealed but distant scene, we must search the forms it has taken for clues to fill with meaning" (Erich Franz and Bernd Growe, Georges Seurat, Drawings, Boston, 1984, p. 61).

Dating from around 1883, this black-and-white composition was completed at the same time that the Impressionists were concentrating on nuances of color. Like the Impressionists, Seurat is a keen observer of light, but his method for rendering the nuances of shadow in this picture are purely dependant on form. Erich Franz has written, "Even the silhouette-like figures from this period owe less to stark constrasts of light and dark than to soft transitions and nuances. Their internal modelling is developed out of an interplay of form and tonal gradations, and their contours are more flowing than earlier, similar figures" (ibid., p. 64).