Peasants

Georges Seurat

1881–84 · Conté crayon · Drawings and Prints

Beginning in the 1880s, Seurat favored drawing with Conté crayon, a dense, greasy medium consisting of refined graphite and clay. The years 1881 to 1884 are those of Seurat's early artistic maturity and the only period in which he treated the subjects of peasants and agricultural labor with any regularity. This sheet shows Seurat's virtuoso control of his medium, achieving a tonal variation ranging from pure white to pure black. His evocative rendering of the twilight, through both the atmospheric conditions and the figures who are no longer working, is also indicative of his esteem for the painter Jean-François Millet.

Artist

Georges Seurat

Date

1881–84

Medium

Conté crayon

Department

Drawings and Prints

Credit line

Bequest of Miss Adelaide Milton de Groot (1876-1967), 1967