An Impressionist Guide to La Grande Jatte in Paris: Georges Seurat, Van Gogh, and Claude Monet

Image via Wikimedia Commons from Google Art Project

One of the iconic paintings of the Impressionist movement, A Sunday on La Grande Jatte in Paris by Georges Seurat, is often shown as the quintessential example of the “Pointillism” style, which is compromised of using small painted dots.
We recently went to check out the scene of Seurat’s painting, and discovered that L’île de la Jatte, an island in the Seine between Neuilly-sur-Seine and Courbevoie, was a source of inspiration for more than Seurat. Monet, Van Gogh, Sisley, Nozal and Gleizes all have paintings from vantage points on the island.

Van Gogh’s The Seine with the Pont de la Grande Jatte (1887). Image via Wikimedia Commons.

Alfred Sisley’s L’île de la Grande Jatte (1873). Image via Wikipedia Commons.

You can find a map of the Impressionist paintings done on La Grande Jatte, along with descriptions of the works, on signage around the island:

The banks of the Seine have all been fortified however, to protect against flooding (such as the great flood of 1910 in Paris), so La Grande Jatte doesn’t have such nice access to the river anymore. And of course, these areas along the Peripherique are just as developed as the center of Paris these days, a far cry from the idyllic scenes painted by the Impressionist painters in the 19th century.
Get in touch with the author @untappedmich.