Georges Seurat

The subject of the indoor caféholds an important place in 19th-century French art, and starting in 1887, Georges Seurat executed several drawings of these Parisian nightspots. Like his contemporary Edgar Degas, Seurat was concerned with the effects of artificial light and its power to distort form and evoke atmosphere. By applying the side of his contécrayon to a heavily textured paper, Seurat achieved a vibrating surface pattern of pits and ridges reminiscent of his Pointillist paintings. His composition is wholly tonal, the whites created with just gouache or the white of the page.