The painter Georges Seurat honored by Google in a doodle

His name does not immediately evoke the voluptuousness of his works.

Yet he is one of those who deserve their place in the pantheon of French painters.

Georges Seurat's life was short, but artistically rich.

With his friend Paul Signac, he founded the divisionism movement at the end of the 19th century, also called “pointillism” for the technique of brushing the brush against the canvas.

Born on December 2, he would be celebrating his 162 years today.

The Google search engine has chosen to pay tribute to him by resuming one of his most famous works,

.

Read also Paul Signac, the exhibition that sets the tone

Georges Seurat was born in Paris, in 1859. Influenced by scientific development and the naturalist theories of his time, he invented the technique of chromo-luminarism, then theorized by Signac under the name of divisionism.

Unlike spot painting, known since the 16th century, the "pointillists" - as its followers have been baptized by hostile critics - do not intend to mix colors.

On the contrary.

They juxtapose the colors, by small touches, in order to avoid the discoloration of the pigments.

A Sunday afternoon on the Île de la Grande Jatte

, painted between May 1884 and May 1886. Youtube screenshot - 1001 Tableaux

A Sunday Afternoon on the Île de la Grande Jatte

is the first work of its kind.

Painted between May 1884 and May 1886, it is presented during the eighth and last exhibition of the Impressionists, in 1886. Today simply called Île de la Jatte, its landscape, located between Neuilly-sur-Seine and Levallois-Perret, inspired other great artists, including Claude Monet and Vincent Van Gogh.

Without breaking away from the Impressionist movement, the painting signifies Seurat's independence from his early influences.

Read alsoA bouquet of flowers completed, Auguste Renoir died on December 3, 1919

The painter did not have the opportunity to produce a very extensive work.

While working on his masterpiece,

, he died suddenly at the age of 31, a victim of meningitis.

Paul Signac will say that his

.

And for good reason: in a decade of production, Georges Seurat, a poor student but brilliant designer of the Beaux-Arts de Paris, will have laid out the contours of neo-impressionism while being one of the founding members of the Society of Independent Artists.

He has since been laid to rest in the Père-Lachaise cemetery.