Georges Seurat was a French painter who died at only 31, leaving behind a small but revolutionary body of work built on his systematic application of color theory — particularly the writings of Michel Eugène Chevreul and Ogden Rood on simultaneous contrast and optical mixing. He was intensely intellectual and secretive about his methods, believing he had discovered a scientific grammar for painting that could produce predictable emotional responses through the precise manipulation of color and line direction. His early death cut short a project of extraordinary ambition; his followers, including Paul Signac, carried Pointillism forward into the twentieth century.
