Le Petit paysan en bleu

This small oil dates from about 1882, when Georges Seurat was barely into his 20s and still years from the technique that made his name. There are no dots here yet. It is a loose, dark study of a boy in a blue smock, the kind of rural figure Millet's generation had made worthy of paint, brushed in the earthy manner Seurat picked up copying the Barbizon painters. Within two or three years he would break colour into the tiny separate touches of the Grande Jatte and be called a Neo-Impressionist. This canvas later belonged to Felix Feneon, the critic who coined that very term for what Seurat did next.