Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte by Georges Seurat shows how the impressionistic theory was carried to a logical, methodical, almost mathematical conclusion. Light, shadow, and color are still the major concerns, and the subject is also that of an urban scene, this time of a relaxed group of middle-class Parisians on a Sunday outing. Instead of informal casual arrangements, however, everything here seems as set as an old-fashioned family portrait. Instead of misty indistinct forms, such details as a bustle, a parasol, or a stovepipe hat are as stylized and geometrical as in a Renaissance fresco.
Unlike the impressionists, who improvised their pictures outdoors, Seurat carefully composed his large canvas in his studio over a period of years. Instead of hastily painted patches of broken color, Seurat worked out a system called Pointillism. By this system thousands of dots of uniform size were applied to the canvas in such a calculated and painstaking way that the most subtle tints were brought under his control. The picture, moreover, was divided into areas, and graduating shades blended tonalities into a tonal unity.
Bal du moulin de la Galette (commonly known as Dance at Le moulin de la Galette) is an 1876 painting by French artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir.
Auguste Renoir, like Manet, was interested in casual, lighthearted scenes. Even before Manet painted his Bar at the Folies-Bergere, Renoir had done a similar scene set in a popular outdoor Paris café, Bal du moulin de la Galette, which had been shown first in the 1877 impressionist exhibit. The full force of impressionistic color is felt in the rainbow of brilliant hues, especially the variations of blue and the marvelous quality of filtered gaslight that Renoir had at his commend. His obvious intention was to evoke the atmosphere of carefree gaity and the whirling movement of dance as well as to revel in a world of color and light.