Georges Seurat Lot n° 32

Georges Seurat In the street 1882/1883 Oil on wood. 15.6 x 24.7 cm. Framed. Unsigned. Inscribed in pencil on the reverse "Dans la rue" and "No 51 Collection Mirbeau, dispersé du Durand-Ruel en Février 1919" and inscribed on a label "NO. 56860 PICTURE". - In good, fresh color condition. Dorra/Rewald 59 Provenance Studio of the artist (estate list no. 26); Léon Appert (brother-in-law of the artist), Paris (until 1900); Octave Mirbeau, Paris; Galerie Durand-Ruel, Paris, Vente Mirbeau, February 24, 1919, lot 51; John Quinn, New York (until 1926); Madame Nicol, Paris; Alfred Daber, Paris; William Weinberg, Scarsdale; Sotheby's London, Weinberg Sale, 10. July 1957, lot 40; T.P. Grange, London; Georges Page Collection, Feldbach; Salis & Vertes (2003), Salzburg; Corboud Collection, permanent loan at Wallraf-Richartz-Museum - Fondation Corboud, Cologne Exhibitions Paris 1900 (La Revue Blanche), Georges Seurat, cat. No. 19; Chicago/New York 1958 (Art Institute of Chicago/Museum of Modern Art), Seurat, cat. No. 60 (with an adhesive label on the reverse, "Museum of Modern Art, Loan, 58,252 Grange"); Paris 1967 (Musée de l'Orangerie), Masterpieces of the Swiss Collections from Manet to Picasso, cat. No. 59, with ill.; Salzburg 2003 (Salis & Vertes), Bouquet d'Art. Festival Exhibition 2003, cat. No. 1 Literature Georges Coquiot, Georges Seurat, Paris 1924, p. 247; John Quinn Collection of Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings and Sculpture, catalog, New York 1926, p. 15 (?); César M. Hauke, Seurat et son oeuvre, 2 vols, Paris 1961, vol. 1, no. 69, ill. p. 41; Pierre Courthion, Georges Seurat, Paris/New York 1969, p. 84; Michael Zimmermann, Seurat. Sein Werk und die kunsttheoretische Debatte seiner Zeit, Weinheim 1991, p. 126, color ill. 234; The Impressionists and their Successors. Die Bilder der Fondation Corboud (Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Fondation Corboud Köln, Bildhefte zur Sammlung), edited by Barbara Schaefer, Cologne 2006, pp. 32, 123, color illus. 22. The colorfully charming study "Dans la rue" is one of the few pure cityscapes by Georges Seurat. The subject, so popular with the Impressionists, made the elegant bourgeoisie in the city of Paris, modernized by Georges-Eugène Haussmann, the sole subject of the painting. From a slightly elevated position, perhaps from his studio on the busy Boulevard de Clichy, Seurat took in the passers-by strolling along the street. Comparable to the famous cityscape "Rain in Paris" (1877) by the French city painter Gustave Caillebotte, Seurat also designed two pictorial spaces differentiated from each other, on the left a broad sidewalk with six passersby, some boldly cut, and on the right the first floor of a store with a large display window. In the shade of a long awning stands casually a man in a long coat and hat. For the figures, Seurat drew on his numerous pencil sketches of male and female strollers, most of which he created only as silhouettes from 1882 to 1884. In terms of color, the study moves along a scale of blue and light brown tones. Seurat skillfully marked a shirt sleeve with four brushstrokes of pure opaque white. Georges Seurat is considered the actual inventor of the pointillist painting technique, in which the pure color is applied in mostly tiny dots and only blends in the viewer's eye at a distance. In the small-format oil studies like this one, also called "croquetons," this technique was not yet fully developed. Rather, these studies served him to test the small-scale application of paint and to prepare for such ambitious works as "Un dimanche après-midi à la Grande Jatte" from 1884-1886.