studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, where he read Chevreul's book on the theory of color. Later he studied the paintings of Delacroix at S. Sulpice in Paris and followed Delacroix's work to further a theory of painting which they both shared.
He was also much influenced by the aesthetic theories based on the observations of a scientist, Charles Henry, and the conclusions of David Sutter's writings on the phenomena of vision, published in 1880. These led him to evolve first the theory of Divisionism and a method of painting by the use of color contrasts in which the areas of shadow are broken down into the complementaries of adjacent areas of light, the light itself being broken down into local color, the color of the light and reflections
As an example of the foregoing, bright yellow-green grass will contain reflections from the sky and from other near-by objects, and the shadows in it will tend towards reddish purple; or the shadows in a reddish-orange dress will be preponderantly greenish-blue.
He also evolved a formal type of composition, based on the Golden Section, on the porportion and relation of objects within the picture space to one another and to the siza and shape of the picture, on the balance of verticals and horizontals, and on figures placed across the picture plane or at right angles to it.
Where the Impressionists stressed the flickering quality of light and figures caught in movement, Seurat aimed at a static quality. His Bathers at Asnieres (La Baignade, London), exhibited in 1884 at the Salon desArtistes Independants in Paris, was not so thorough-going an exposition of his theories as the Sunday on the Island of La Grande Jatte (Chicago) exhibited in 1886 at the last Impressionist Exhibition.
The term Neo-Impressionist was established for Seurat and the grouparound him in 1886. He was long opposed to any popularization of his theories, since he believed that by robbing them of novelty it would also rob them of their effect, but in 1890 he consented to the publication of a resume of his theory.
His early death in 1891, however, meant that his ideas were developed only by a few followers and imitators.