How to Read Paintings: A Sunday Afternoon On La Grande Jatte by Georges Seurat

A vivid and telling portrait of Parisian bourgeois in the sun

A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (1884–1886) by Georges Seurat. Oil on canvas. Art Institute of Chicago, U.S. Image source Wikimedia Commons

Georges Seurat’s painting of a Sunday afternoon in Paris appears, at first glance, to celebrate the carefree hours of a series of well-to-do families.